A Spanish artist especially well suited by mood
and by circumstance to portray the horrors of war was Francisco de Goya.
He had an especially bleak artistic vision, and his Black Paintings are among
the darkest images ever painted.

Disasters of War is a series of 85 engravings,
produced by Goya after witnessing the brutal Peninsular War between France
and Spain. The images are rarely heroic, focusing instead on the nightmarish
atrocities which became commonplace.

7-31-02 - DREAM - The dream takes place somewhere
in the country where they drive cattle from horseback.

I was just an observer in this dream. The woman
of the house looked outside and saw the men driving the cattle home early.
I observed that the men are bringing the cattle in through threes that look
like an orchard of some kind.

The woman of the house quickly makes up a bed for
the man of the house who is brought in on a stretcher. He is wounded and
both hands and forearms are amputated.

He tells her that he doesn't want to live this
way, but she assures him that he will be fine and nurses him back to health.
He is a tall, strong man, dressed in blue military clothing, like Civil War
style.

The house is under attack by some other men and
even the woman of the house is wounded and she has a large bandage on her
right hand. She pulls out a small photograph of Jesus from the bandage and
someone says - "A Father is defenseless without his son."

The Civil War was fought, claimed the Union army
surgeon general, "at the end of the medical Middle Ages." Little was known
about what caused disease, how to stop it from spreading, or how to cure
it. Surgical techniques ranged from the barbaric to the barely
competent.

A Civil War soldier's chances of not surviving
the war was about one in four. These fallen men were cared for by a woefully
underqualified, understaffed, and undersupplied medical corps. Working against
incredible odds, however, the medical corps increased in size, improved its
techniques, and gained a greater understanding of medicine and disease every
year the war was fought.

During the period just before the Civil War, a
physician received minimal training. Nearly all the older doctors served
as apprentices in lieu of formal education. Even those who had attended one
of the few medical schools were poorly trained. In Europe, four-year medical
schools were common, laboratory training was widespread, and a greater
understanding of disease and infection existed. The average medical student
in the United States, on the other hand, trained for two years or less, received
practically no clinical experience, and was given virtually no laboratory
instruction. Harvard University, for instance, did not own a single stethoscope
or microscope until after the war.

When the war began, the Federal army had a total
of about 98 medical officers, the Confederacy just 24. By 1865, some 13,000
Union doctors had served in the field and in the hospitals; in the Confederacy,
about 4,000 medical officers and an unknown number of volunteers treated
war casualties. in both the North and South, these men were assisted by thousands
of women who donated their time and energy to help the wounded. It is estimated
that more than 4,000 women served as nurses in Union hospitals; Confederate
women contributed much to the effort as well.

Although Civil War doctors were commonly referred
to as "butchers" by their patients and the press, they managed to treat more
than 10 million cases of injury and illness in just 48 months and most did
it with as much compassion and competency as possible. Poet Walt Whitman,
who served as a volunteer in Union army hospitals, had great respect for
the hardworking physicians, claiming that "All but a few are excellent
men...

Approximately 620,000 men-360,000 Northerners and
260,000 Southerners-died in the four-year conflict, a figure that tops the
total fatalities of all other wars in which America has fought. Of these
numbers, approximately 110,000 Union and 94,000 Confederate men died of wounds
received in battle. Every effort was made to treat wounded men within 48
hours; most primary care was administered at field hospitals located far
behind the front lines. Those who survived were then transported by unreliable
and overcrowded ambulances-two-wheeled carts or four-wheeled wagons-to army
hospitals located in nearby cities and towns.

The most common Civil War small arms ammunition
was the dreadful minnie ball, which tore an enormous wound on impact: it
was so heavy that an abdominal or head wound was almost always fatal, and
a hit to an extremity usually shattered any bone encountered. In addition,
bullets carried dirt and germs into the wound that often caused
infection.

Of the approximately 175,000 wounds to the extremities
received among Federal troops, about 30,000 led to amputation; roughly the
same proportion occurred in the Confederacy. One witness described a common
surgeon's tent this way: "Tables about breast high had been erected upon
which the screaming victims were having legs and arms cut off. The surgeons
and their assistants, stripped to the waist and bespattered with blood, stood
around, some holding the poor fellows while others, armed with long, bloody
knives and saws, cut and sawed away with frightful rapidity, throwing the
mangled limbs on a pile nearby as soon as removed."

Contrary to popular myth, most amputees did not
experience the surgery without anesthetic. Ample doses of chloroform were
administered beforehand; the screams heard were usually from soldiers just
informed that they would lose a limb or who were witness to the plight of
other soldiers under the knife.

Those who survived their wounds and surgeries still
had another hurdle, however: the high risk of infection. While most surgeons
were aware of a relationship between cleanliness and low infection rates,
they did not know how to sterilize their equipment. Due to a frequent shortage
of water, surgeons often went days without washing their hands or instruments,
thereby passing germs from one patient to another as he treated them. The
resulting vicious infections, commonly known as "surgical fevers," are believed
to have been caused largely by Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pyogenes,
bacterial cells which generate pus, destroy tissue, and release deadly toxins
into the bloodstream. Gangrene, the rotting away of flesh caused by the
obstruction of blood flow, was also common after surgery. Despite these fearful
odds, nearly 75 percent of the amputees survived.

At the time of the Civil War, before the X-ray
was discovered and the germ theory had taken hold, most physicians had never
seen a gunshot wound and didn't know how to treat one. Amputation was the
most common treatment for serious leg or arm injury, and more soldiers died
of disease than from enemy bullets. The National Museum of Health and Medicine
was established in response."

-- The Civil War Trust's Official Guide to the
Civil War Discovery Trail, 1998

Gross is the operative word at this unappreciated
museum, where visitors wade through amputated limbs, diseased organs, kidney
stones, live leeches, and much more. Your first impulse is to recoil in horror,
but eventually you're filled with joy, thanking your lucky stars medicine
has come so far. An exhibit on Abe Lincoln's autopsy is found here, too,
and the moving array includes fragments of his skull, hair, and blood, as
well as the bullet that killed him. Nearby are pieces of John Kiles Booth's
spinal cord. Located on the Walter Reed Army Medical Center campus, the place
is off the beaten path, but is a must see. The best access is via the main
gate at 6900 Georgia Ave. Just tell the guards where you're going, and they'll
direct you."

-- American Way, November 1, 1998

The museum's gallery space retains a fascinating
array of early medical specimens, odd human case studies, and all sorts of
scientific models and instruments. Among the more historic artifacts are
the bullet that killed Abraham Lincoln, Paul Revere's dental tools, and Incan
skulls that indicate early attempts at head surgery. The unfortunate effects
of elephantiasis on a young victim are evident in one fully preserved limb.
A complete skeleton of a 467-year-old Spanish-American War veteran shows
how his joints were gradually frozen by expanding bone, rendering him unable
to move. A series of models summarizes the development of transportation
for the wounded, from stiff, horse-drawn ambulances to mobile hospital railcars.
Several other skeletons and anatomical displays augment an iron lung used
by polio patients, surgical tools, and the world's most comprehensive microscope
collection. The museum's private holdings are a center of research and include
thousands of photographs, X-ray equipment, skeletal specimens, and preserved
organs. The vast collections aid studies in pathology, forensic anthropology,
and other sciences."

-- American History, October 1998

"The museum, in fact, was open to the public when
it occupied Ford's Theater after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln at
the same time the Pension Office occupied the same space. So oftentimes
pensioners who came back to collect information or provide information in
the Pension Office would also stop by the museum and sometimes even look
at objects that had once been part of themselves on display."

-- The Anatomical Record, October 1998

"The original Civil War medical museum was founded
in 1862 to research and improve battlefield medicine. Today it houses a
seven-foot skeleton, the bullet that killed Abraham Lincoln, an iron lung,
live leeches, a pregnancy smock, Paul Revere's dental tools, thousands of
other artifacts, documents, photographs - and real anatomy - to illustrate
exhibits on the human body, military medicine, medical history and today's
health issues."

-- Baltimore Sun, September 1998

REVOLUTIONARY
WAR From 1775- Until 1782 the Americans faced off against the largest
empire in the world. Led by General Washington they won. Participants 290,000
- Deaths - 4000

By 1775, tension between the colonies and the mother
country had reached the breaking point. General Gage, who was in charge of
the British troops in Boston, learned that the colonists had hidden a large
collection of weapons in nearby Concord. Gage sent a detachment of soldiers
to seize the rebel leaders and destroy the stores of ammunition. Sons of
Liberty Paul Revere and William Dawes rode to warn of the impending British
attack by way of the Charles River; the most direct route. Just as the sun
was rising on April 19, 1775, British soldiers reached Lexington. A straggling
line of colonists was already waiting on the green--armed with muskets. Eight
Minutemen were killed and several others wounded in the first skirmish on
Lexington Green which signaled the beginning of the American Revolution.

By the time the Second Continental Congress convened
on May 10, 1775, war had already broken out in Massachusetts. Battles had
been fought between Massachusetts soldiers and British military forces in
the towns of Lexington and Concord. Yet war had not been declared. Even so,
citizen soldiers in each of the thirteen American colonies were ready to
fight.

Two days after the Congress appointed George Washington
as army commander, colonists and British troops fought the first major battle
of the American Revolution. It was called the Battle of Bunker
Hill.

The Continental armed forces strength is very
underestimated. In 1775 the population of the 13 colonies was 2.5 million.
An estimated 1/3 of the people were against the Revolution. Even so some
290,000 enlistments were made to join and fight against the British. Even
that number is misleading because many signed more than once. It is believed
that some 200,000 people fought against the British, the majority as
militias.

The 100 cannons were captured from the British Fort
Ticconderoga and were the only guns in the early the beginning of the
war.

Some 1,000 cannons were captured from the British,
and some 16,000 prisoners were taken. But they also suffered great losses,
some 11,000 men died. The captured were often given the choice of being executed
or joining the Royal Navy who was short on men.

Great Britain lost 10,000 men to death and
6,000 wounded and lost 2,479 ships

The Continental Army lost 25,435 men and
6,188 wounded and lost 1,323 ships

The peace treaty ending the American Revolution
was signed in Paris in 1783. The independence of the United States was
recognized. Western and northern borders were set. Thirteen colonies were
free. Now, they had to become one nation.

WAR OF 1812 - 1812 to 1815 - Participants -
287,000 - Deaths - 2,000?

Some call it the Second War of Independence, for
when it ended and the US had fought Great Britain to a stalemate, Americas
independence was assured. The battle of Antietam has been called the bloodiest
event in American history. Nearly six thousand soldiers were killed, more
than seventeen thousand wounded, and another three thousand captured or missing.
More than twice as many people died during the single day of the battle than
in the entirety of the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Spanish-American
War combined. As a major Union victory, Antietam was of considerable strategic
importance. It also led directly to the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation,
which changed the nature of the war by making slavery the central issue.
Antietam is also significant for being the first occasion on which the American
public was to view its war dead.

In photographs, you see hushed, reverend groups
standing around these weird copies of carnage, bending down to look in the
pale faces of the dead, chained by the strange spell that dwells in dead
men's eyes. It seems somewhat singular that the same sun that looked down
on the face of the slain, blistering them, blotting out from the bodies all
semblances to humanity, and hastening corruption, should have thus caught
their features upon canvas and given them perpetuity for ever.

Many, having seen it and dreamed of its horrors,
would lock it up in some secret drawer, that it might not thrill or revolt
those whose soul sickens at such sights. It was so nearly like visiting the
battlefield to look over these views, that all the emotions excited by the
actual sight of the stained and sordid scene, strewed with rags and wrecks,
came back to us, and we buried them in the recesses of our cabinet as we
would have buried the mutilated remains of the dead they too vividly
represented.

More often than not, scalping was practiced as a
response in kind. The Eurpoeans had taught them, first hand, the horror of
viewing the mutilated remains of their families and friends after an attack
by white settlers. By inflicting the same mutilation on their enemies they
had hoped to stem the onslaught of these white settlers that were invading
their land. To some Indians,if the attacks could not stop the whites, at
least it would send the message that they were prepared to be as unscrupulous
as the Europeans. The Iroquois in particular, used scalping to this purpose.

In the 11th century, the Earl of Wessex scalped
his enemies. When the English and the Dutch came to the new world they brought
the custom with them. This activity was brought not so much as an official
method of warfare, but as a bounty to ease the anger of the frontiersmen.

The western border of the colonies was being populated
with settlers that were comprised of a dubious lot. They were outlaws and
runaways. With them they brought disease and alcohol. The frontier was a
breeding ground for conflict with the Indian population. Initially the
frontiersmen turned on the Indians in an attempt to move them off the land.
When the Indians retaliated, the settlers turned to the government for help.
The settlers demanded retribution for the Indian reprisals. The Dutch, and
soon after the English, government created the scalp bounty as a means to
pacify the settlers. Simply, they paid a fee for each scalp that was delivered
to the locally appointed magistrate.

Although the army was accomplishing the task of
displacing the Indians, the bounty encouraged settlers to mount attacks on
the Indians whenever they could. In 1703, Massachusetts paid 12 pounds for
an Indian scalp. By 1723 the price had soared to 100 pounds. To the frontiersmen,
it did not matter if the scalp came from an Indian or a white man. All that
mattered was the bonus. The practice eventually became widespread. The French
used the bounty on scalps to eradicate a peaceful tribe in Newfoundland.
During the French and Indian Wars, the English offered their troops a bounty
of 200 pounds for the scalp of the chief of the Delaware tribe, Shinngass.
This was 25 times the price that they offered their Indian allies for the
scalp of a French soldier. This practice of paying a bounty for Indian scalps
continued into the 19th century before the public put an end to the practice.

In 1782, by early March Shawnee war parties from
Sandusky captured John Carpenter and murdered two other families. Carpenter
subsequently escaped. It was assumed, due to the early timing, that the Indians
were either Moravians or that the attacking warriors had wintered in the
Moravian towns on the Muskingum River. Since the Moravians were at fault
in some manner, it was decided that the safety of the frontier settlements
necessitated the destruction of the Indian settlements in that
area.

Col. Williamson gathered between eighty and ninety
men and upon reaching the Moravian settlements found them gathering corn.
After placing them all in two large huts, he had a vote to decide whether
they should be taken as prisoners to Fort Pitt or put to death. All the Indians
regardless of age or sex were then massacred. This action was so bad that
a list of the men involved has never been recorded.

The Indian war had been going on for many years.
Each spring and fall, and sometimes in the summer, Indians raided the settlements
along the frontier.

On May 25, 1782, 480 men mustered at the old Mingo
towns on the western side of the Ohio River. With their families away from
harm on the Scioto River, the Shawnee Indians returned to the Sandusky plains
to wait in ambush. The army started marching early in the morning and continued
until about two o'clock. As the advance guard passed through the high grass
that covered the plain, they encountered a large number of Indians and were
driven back to the main force. The firing was heavy until dark, when it ceased.
Both sides built large fires along the line of battle and then retired back
to prevent a surprise night attack.

The following day the settler's army occupied the
battlefield. Indians were seen in large groups moving in various directions
around the plains, but an attack did not come until evening.

As morning came on the third day of battle, the
officers held a council and resolved that retreat was the only means of saving
their army. Burying the dead, burning fires over the graves to prevent discovery
and arranging means to carry off the wounded made preparations for the retreat.
They planned to leave after dark.

The Indians number seemed to increase as each hour
passed. As sunset began, so did a full force Indian attack from all directions
excepting that of Sandusky. The line of march was formed with the retreat
going north toward Sandusky. After about one mile, the line took a left turn
and circled back to the trail they had taken to reach the plains. Some of
the men broke off in small groups to try to make it home on their
own.

After about a half mile Col. Crawford, finding his
son John, son-in-law Major Harrison, and his nephews Major Rose and William
Crawford missing, left the head of the command dropping back to the rear
in search. Loosing the main force he joined company with a small party and
traveled north throughout the night. The next day while under attack Col.
Crawford and Dr. Knight were taken captive to a nearby Indian encampment,
then on to an old Wyandot town. Most of the captives were then tomahawked
and scalped by squaws and boys.

Col. Crawford was taken to a large fire, stripped
and ordered to set down. He was then severely beaten and afterwards tied
to a large post that was in the center of the fire. The rope allowed Crawford
to walk around the fire two or three times. The Indians then discharged a
large number of loads of powder on his skin, placed burning ends of poles
against his body and allowed the squaws to throw coals and hot ashes at him.

After suffering for about three hours, Crawford
became faint and fell face down. An Indian scalped him, then an old squaw
poured burning coals on the open scalp wound. He rose and walked around the
post for a short time, then died. His body was tossed into the fire. The
Shawnees' executed Col. Crawford's son and son-in-law.

Outraged over the incessant attacks executed by
whites, in late 1875, the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians insolently left their
reservations in the Black Hills and congregated in Montana with the great
warrior Sitting Bull. It was then that they first began to devise a strategy
to protect their sacred lands. Two separate triumphs over the US Cavalry
earlier that year helped to encourage the Indians to confidently enter into
battle in the summer of 1876.

In an attempt to drive the massive Indian forces
back to the reservations, the U.S. Army sent out three lines to attack in
a synchronized manner, one of which included Lt. Colonel George Custer and
the Seventh Cavalry.

Custer was determined to attack before the main
Indian party could be alerted, so ignoring orders to wait, he went forward
with the assault. Unfortunately, Custer had no idea of the sheer numbers
he was up against, not to mention the level of hostility. Custer was worried
that the clan would get away through the upper valley of the Little Bighorn
River. Thus he naively split his forces in three, and dispatched troops under
Captain Frederick Benteen to thwart any efforts of escape on the part of
the Indians.

Custer and his troops were not sufficiently prepared
to cross the kind of terrain laid between them and their destination of attack.
He discovered too late that he would have to negotiate a formidable labyrinth
of bluffs and ravines before he could carry out his plan.

Reno's squadron of 175 soldiers attacked from the
North. The Indians crossed the river below Reno and swarmed up the bluff
on all sides and the soldiers soon found themselves to be in way over their
heads. Consequently, Renos assault, had it not been for the sheer horror
of it, played out like a scene from an old black and white comedy movie.
Reno and his men fought furiously and unsuccessfully for approximately ten
minutes, and ultimately withdrew into the woods, utterly defeated.

As the Indians continued to close in, Custer ordered
his men to shoot their horses and build a wall with their corpses, however
this strategy did little to protect against the attack. In less than an hour,
Custer and his men were slain in what has been called the worst American
military disaster in history. After another day's fighting, Reno and Benteen's
now united troops managed to flee when the Indians ended the fight in an
effort to circumvent the subsequent attacks that were rumored to occur.

As the Indians continued to close in, Custer ordered
his men to shoot their horses and build a wall with their corpses, however
this strategy did little to protect against the attack. In less than
an hour, Custer and his men were slain in what has been called the worst American military disaster in history. After another day's fighting,
Reno and Benteen's now united troops managed to flee when the Indians ended the fight in an effort to circumvent the subsequent attacks that
were rumored to occur.

In the wake of the battle, the Indians returned
to the scene of the crime to ravage the remains of the uniformed soldiers.
They did this believing that the soul of a mutilated body would be forced
to walk the earth for all eternity and could not ascend to heaven. The Indians
wanted to punish the soldiers for eternity for the atrocities they had committed
upon them.

Inexplicably, the returning warriors stripped Custer's
body and cleaned it, but did not scalp or mutilate it. He had been dressed
in buckskins instead of the standard blue uniform, and some believe that
the Indians thought he was not a soldier, and that their reluctance to dishonor
an innocent party caused them to leave him alone.

Wounded Knee

On December 29th, 1890, a band of Lakota people
led by Spotted Elk ( Chief Bigfoot) was encircled by the Seventh
Calvary, at the place called Cankpe Opi Wakpala, the creek called Wounded
Knee.

In the early morning hours the men were assembled
in a semi-circle formation in front of the tipis and disarmed. The soldiers
went among the women and children and took knives, sewing awls, and tent
pegs. Some of the soldiers lifted the dresses of the women and said
bad things. A holy man fearing for the lives of his people stood up and beseeched
the creator and asked for protection for the lives of the people. A shot
rang out and the soldiers fired en masse into the sitting Lakota men, killing
most of them instantly. The horror was only beginning. The women and children
ran as the soldiers chased them down and killed them one by one. The slaughter
was to continue for over three hours. Some of the dead were found over three
miles from the campsite.

The dispute over Texas joining the Union resulted
in US conquest of California and the balance of the Southwest. In August,
1843, not long after the Mexican victory at Mier, plans were made in Mexico
City for an invasion of Texas. The invasion was canceled, however, when Santa
Anna was pressured by foreign governments into exploring the possibilities
of peace with the new republic. A peace treaty was proposed in early 1844
whereby the two countries agreed to retain the territory they presently occupied.

One problem complicating relations between the republics
of Texas and Mexico was the desire in Texas for annexation to the United
States. This desire was not shared by many Americans, including the New England
intellectual Ralph Waldo Emerson, who bitterly opposed any move toward
annexation

By 1844, the annexation of the Lone Star Republic
had become a major political issue in the presidential campaign. The Democrat,
James K. Polk of Tennessee, running on an expansionist platform calling for
annexation, was swept into power. The lame-duck president, John Tyler, seeing
the election as a clear mandate for annexation, maneuvered through Congress
a joint resolution calling for Texas to become part of the Union.

In February, 1846, Anson Jones, the last president
of the Republic of Texas, lowered the Lone Star flag in Austin and raised
the Stars and Stripes. Mexico, which had previously agreed to recognize Texas
if the infant republic remained independent, then broke diplomatic relations
with the United States. Both the United States and Mexico rushed headlong
into the bloody caldron of war.

On March 8, 1846, the United States Army marched
south from Corpus Christi to the Rio Grande. Water was scarce, and the march
was regulated by the distance between water holes. At that time, not a single
village existed between the Nueces and the Rio Grande.

Gen. Zachary Taylor ordered one of his officers
to cross the Rio Grande to Matamoros to inform the Mexican commander of the
reasons for the American presence on the river. In response, the Mexican
commander, referring to the army as intruders, demanded that the American
flag be removed from the soil of Mexico. Mexican soldiers and civilians,
clearly visible across the river, were seen preparing earthen works and pulling
cannon into position. Taylor ordered his men to prepare for battle. War clouds
were gathering. Almost every morning, new Mexican breastworks were visible
across the river on the outskirts of Matamoros. Taylor, too, decided to fortify.
Fort Texas, an earthen compound, was built across from the Mexican city.

On ApriI 24, 1846, two companies of dragoons under
Captain Seth B. Thornton were surprised at La Rosita, upriver from Fort Texas.
The Americans were surrounded and defeated by 500 cavalry commanded by General
Anastasio Torrejón. Sixty-three men were either killed, wounded, or
captured. Taylor wrote Polk that "hostilities may now be considered as
commenced."

On the Rio Grande, rumors, later found to be false,
reached Taylor that the American supply base at Point Isabel was under attack.
Without hesitation, Taylor ordered his staff to make preparations for a march
to relieve the vital port. Leaving Major Jacob Brown in command of Fort Texas
with 500 men of the 7th Infantry, Taylor turned east for the coast with 2,300
men. Marching eighteen hours the first day, Taylor was able to complete the
twenty-six-mile march to the coast by noon the following day. To their surprise,
no Mexican force was in sight, and the men went into camp that evening without
incident.

Early the next morning, as the sun began to break
over the gulf, a distant rumbling could be heard far to the southwest, in
the direction of Fort Texas. The thunder from the river could mean only one
thing Fort Texas was under attack from Casamata, the military outpost in
Matamoros.

As Major Brown continued to hold the fort, Taylor,
with a baggage train of 250 wagons, began a counter march for the river.
General Arista, who had crossed the river with a force of over 6,000 three
times that of Taylor's army moved to meet the Americans. One day after leaving
the coast, Taylor encountered the Mexican Army near a water hole on the prairie
called Palo Alto.

Only sunset brought an end to the bloodletting.
As darkness crept across the battlefield, the Mexican Army, among the groans
of the wounded and the silence of the dead, withdrew into the chaparral.
Arista's casualties in the battle included 320 killed and 400 wounded, while
Taylor had lost nine men killed and forty-seven wounded. Although victorious,
the General realized his army was too fatigued to pursue Arista.

The Battle of Resaca de la Palma proved to be even
more decisive than Palo Alto. The loss of life was also more frightening.
Arista's losses were said to be several hundred, while Taylor counted
thirty-three killed and eighty-nine wounded. "The enemy's loss was very great,"
Taylor wrote. "Nearly two hundred of his dead were buried by us on the day
succeeding the battle. Our victory has been decisive. A small force has overcome
immense odds against the best troops that Mexico can furnish. Eight pieces
of artillery, several colors and standards, a great number of prisoners,
including fourteen officers and a large amount of baggage and public property
have fallen into our hands.

On May 18, 1846, Taylor entered Matamoros without
opposition. The American occupation of Texas had now become an invasion of
Mexico. A war was underway that would redraw the political map of North
America.

In late 1846 and early 1847, Taylor engaged the
Mexican Army in bloody battles at Monterrey and Buena Vista. The Mexicans
did not easily yield Monterrey. They lost a decisive battle to the Americans
at Buena Vista, south of Saltillo. On the southern front, General Winfield
Scott disembarked at Veracruz and captured Mexico City in October, 1847.

In late February, 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo
was signed, ending the war between the two nations.

SPANISH AMERICAN WAR - 1898 to 1902 Participants
392,000 - Deaths in Service - 11,000

An Opportunity for Expansion Cuba, only ninety miles
off the coast of the United States, presented American espansionists with
an opportune chance to end their country's isolation and assert its power
in world affairs. Spanish control over the island had weakened considerably
since the late 1860s, when Cuban rebels first began to agitate for their
independence. In the 1870s a prolonged uprising took place against the Spanish;
and in 1895, a revolution began. In 1868, the Ten Years War began as
a nationalist uprising against Spanish imperialism. Gradually, Spanish forces
on the island were built up and a blockade imposed.

Soon after the explosion of the Maine, President
McKinley asked for a cessation of hostilities between Spain and Cuba. Congress
adopted a resolution declaring Cuba free, giving the President the right
to use whatever means necessary to compel Spain to withdraw their military
forces from Cuba. On April 20 the United States sent an ultimatum to Spain,
who responded with a declaration of war on April 24.

Remembering the Maine - U.S.S. Maine
(BB-2)

President McKinley dispatched the vessel from Key
West on January 25th. The U.S.S. Maine was a battleship, 319 feet long and
displacing 6,682 tons; the the largest ship ever to enter the harbor
at Havana. The nine-year-old vessel was among the most impressive of the
U.S. Naval fleet.

Most of Captain Charles D. Sigsbee's 24 Naval officers
were graduates of the Academy at Annapolis. At least 20% of the 290 sailors
they commanded were foreign born men who sought now to serve their adopted
country.

A 40-man Marine guard brought the ship's total
strength to 355 American servicemen. The men were commanded by First Lieutenant
Albertus W. Catlin who had graduated from the US Naval Academy with the class
of 1890. Nearly a fourth of the Marines were foreign-born, American
immigrants.

Upon arrival in Havana on Tuesday, January 25th,
the U.S.S. Maine anchored at Bouy #4, a space reserved for war ships. Despite
this, the potential for the unrest in Cuba to turn violent, and the Maine's
impressive array of military power, the mission was a peaceful one. Captain
Sigsbee informed his crew that there would be no shore liberty while in Cuba,
but for the most part the men were content to spend a brief time riding
peacefully at anchor under the tropical sun of the Caribbean.

The Spanish welcomed, though somewhat nervously,
the arrival of the Maine, and sent a case of sherry to the officer's
mess along with an invitation to a bull fight at the "plaza de toros". Captain
Sigsbee and a few of his officers dutifully accepted the invite, attending
in civilian attire. On his visit ashore the commander of the Maine was at
one point handed an anti-American propaganda pamphlet by someone in the crowd.
Scrawled across it was the message, "Watch out for your ship."

Beyond the scrawled message at plaza de toros however,
there was little more to indicate that the crew of the Maine was facing any
undue danger. None-the-less, as a matter of prudence, Sigsbee ordered Lieutenant
Catlin to keep his Marines at a careful state of alert.

By Tuesday, February 15th , 1998 the Maine
had been at anchor for three weeks without incident. Though Lieutenant Catlin
dutifully kept his Marines at a high state of alert, the crew of the Maine's
biggest problem became boredom.

That evening, Captain Sigsbee began was writing
a letter to his family when "Taps" signaled the end of the day. It was a
dark, moonless night as the Maine sat idly on the smooth waters of the Caribbean
harbor, anchored at peace between the the Spanish cruiser Alfonso XII and
the American passenger ship City of Washington.

A moment later the explosion came. It was a bursting,
rending, and crashing roar of immense volume, largely metallic in character.
It was followed by heavy, ominous metallic sounds. There was a trembling
and lurching motion of the vessel, a list to port. great masses of twisted
and bent iron plates and beams were thrown up in confusion amidships. The
bow had disappeared; the foremast and smoke stacks had fallen; and to add
to the horror and danger, the mass of wreckage amidships was on fire. The
electric lights went out. Then there was intense blackness and
smoke.

The Maine was blown up and sinking. The darkness
of the harbor was now awash with flame, the passageways inside the ship plunged
into total darkness, save for flames here and there amid a heavy pall of
smoke. The battleship was rapidly sinking. The entire forward section of
the Maine had broken almost entirely in half. Nearly three-quarters of the
battleships crew died as a result of the explosion. All told, 264 sailors
and 2 officers were killed aboard the Maine. Following the explosion, a United
States Navy Board of Inquiry determined the tragedy was caused by an external
mine, which detonated of one of the ships powder magazines.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As the news of the Maines explosion spread,
many Americans felt compelled to take action. A generation of young men was
coming of age whose fathers and grandfathers had fought in the Civil War,
and these men sought to prove their courage, to attain glory, and to honorably
serve their country in their own war. The Spanish-American War provided this
opportunity at a time when war was seen as nothing less than glorious. However,
as war grew imminent, the United States Army was plagued with a number of
shortages resulting from post-Civil War military downsizing. The organization,
leadership, training, and equipment stockpiles of the Army were all geared
towards sustaining a limited force of troops. To take advantage of the incredible
number of young men wanting to serve in the impending war, a compromise was
reached by supplementing voids in the Regular Armys ranks with a volunteer
force. On April 22, 1898, the President made his first call for 125,000 volunteer
troops, which was restricted to the National Guard of each state. In accordance
with the Presidents request, Governor Tanner summoned Illinois
men to come to arms. 6,608 men volunteered.

For over a generation Americans had watched in horror
as the Spanish imperialists had brutally suppressed Cuban independence efforts,
killing thousands of Cuban civilians. Long fuming with indignation, American
now demanded a war to liberate Cuba and avenge the Maine.

The master publicist John Burke traveled to Cuba
in 1897 and, despite the watchful eye of Spanish agents, had managed to recruit
14 Cuban rebels for Cody's Wild West show. The men had all been wounded in
battle, one having lost a leg and another an arm. They were commanded by
Lt. Col. Ernesto Delgado who had himself twice been wounded. "Colonel Cody
has performed a distinct national service in bringing these Cuban heroes
to the United States," noted the World. "They give us an opportunity to see
the kind of men who make up the insurgent army." The people of New York were
clearly impressed with what they saw.

On April 19, 1898, a joint resolution calling for
armed intervention passed Congress, and on April 23 Spain declared war on
the United States. On April 25 the U.S. declared war, and on that same day
Burke declared that Gen. Nelson A. Miles, commanding general of the U.S.
Army, had asked Cody to join him as a scout. "Buffalo Bill will come back
again," Burke declared, "but he will leave a record behind him that neither
Cuba nor America will be apt to forget, while Spain will remember him with
a groan." The next day the New York Herald featured Cody alongside other
notable men - Theodore Roosevelt, Joseph Wheeler, Fitzhugh Lee, Charles King
- who would hold commands in the expanded volunteer army. Roosevelt, the
assistant secretary of the Navy, was to become a lieutenant colonel in a
unique regiment of western "cowboy cavalry." Cody would "serve on the staff
of Major General Miles as chief of scouts" with the rank of
colonel.

The U.S. braced for war in the Caribbean. Despite
the gradual buildup of hostilities, the U.S. armed forces were ill-equipped
and untrained for war, especially one involving highly coordinated land-sea
operations. It was enormously fortuitous for the U.S. that the Spanish forces
were even less prepared. The Spanish fleet, after successfully crossing the
Atlantic, managed to trap itself in Santiago Bay, and was destroyed by the
U.S. navy a few days before U.S. ground troops captured Santiago and they
tried to flee the blockaded harbor. On July 17 the Spanish army surrendered.
For the following two weeks 3,000 U.S. troops moved on to Puerto Rico,
encountering little resistance.

Back in the Philippines, 11,000 ground troops were
sent in, and an uneasy alliance between insurgent Filipino and U.S. forces
led to Spanish surrender August 14. Although the Filipinos initially appreciated
the U.S. role in helping evict their Spanish rulers, tensions mounted as
it became clear that our interest there had less to do with protecting democracy
than it did with territorial expansion. Even before the peace treaty was
signed, U.S. troops fired on a group of Filipinos and started the
Philippine-American War, a vicious and ugly chapter in U.S. history that
lasted until 1914. Openly racist views of the Filipinos underscored public
debate and policy. The actual death toll will never be known, but estimates
of the number of civilians that perished from famine, disease, and other
war-related causes range from 200,000 to 600,000. In March 1906 an estimated
600 Muslim Filipinos - men, women, and children - were massacred over a four-day
period under troops commanded by General Leonard Wood, who later became the
Philippine governor general.

BATTLE OF THE ALAMO - March 6, 1836

In rooms where priests had prayed, bayonets clashed
with Bowie Knives and swords. Musket and cannon fire tore into the Texan
defenders. By dawn, all the Texan combatants lay dead. Their sacrifice,
on March 6, 1836, would immortalize them as legends, and turn the Alamo grounds
into Sacred Ground. It was a 13-day siege that ended in a bloody battle on
March 6, 1836, which left nearly 2,000 men dead or wounded.

Many months after the battle, the charred remains
of the Alamo defenders were laid to rest not far from the Alamo itself. Presiding
at the ceremony was Brother Juan Sequin. The words he spoke at the interment
speak to us even today:

"The spirit of liberty appears to be looking down
from it's elevated throne saying: Behold your Brothers: Crockett, Bowie,
Travis. They preferred to die a thousand times rather than submit themselves
to the tyrants yoke. Their sacrifices are worthy of inclusion in the pages
of history. What a brilliant example for others to follow."

Ghostly manifestations and paranormal sightings
have continued to occur within the battlefield area and on the Alamo grounds
over the past 160 years. The destruction of the Long Barracks was once prevented
when Mexican soldiers were confronted by ghostly forms holding swords of
fire! Alamo employees repeatedly hear a woman sobbing in the basement. Alamo
rangers watch in horror as a defender is repeatedly shot and stabbed by Mexican
soldiers---then vanishes. A child is seen peering down from the gift shop
window at unsuspecting visitors. Faces mysteriously appear above the Chapel
window-

A war can never be said to be completely over until
there is nobody left who took part in it. That time must be coming soon:
the Great War took place in the last century, and almost all of those who
experienced its horrors first hand in are now dead.

One in five of those who fought died during the
war itself. The rest have gradually followed their comrades, until now there
can't be more than a tiny number of very old men who experienced the horrors
of the trenches.

One of the most common forms of wording on those
war memorials which are found in almost every British churchyard, village
green, or town square is 'Lest We Forget'. Back in the 1920s those who had
survived the war, and those whose sons, and husbands and brothers and fathers
had not come home, vowed that the sacrifice of so many would be recorded
in stone.

There is a terrible poignancy in some of those
weathering monuments; especially in small villages which must have been
devastated by the loss of the handful of young, and not so young men whose
names are inscribed there.

We know now, with the hindsight of almost eighty
years, that the Great War was never likely to be forgotten. The ordered rows
of headstones in the hundreds of war cemeteries in France and Belgium and
elsewhere are a constant reminder of the terrible carnage between 1914 and
1918. And three generations later the pilgrimages go on.

For the soldiers who came back from the trenches,
there was the thanks of a grateful country, a suit of civilian clothes, a
pair of medals, and a small cash payment. A private was given the equivalent
of a few weeks wages, an officer got rather more, and Sir Douglas Haig was
given an earldom and £100,000, and eventually was the subject of the
last equestrian statue in London.

Many of those returning did of course get a little
extra cash in the form of a disability pension. Unfortunately that also carried
with it the inconvenience of being disabled. For most the money did not last
long, and for most too it seemed that the gratitude of the country ran out
fairly quickly.

The men who hadn't shared the sacrifices of the
trenches were, by and large, a lot better off than those who had. They were
settled in jobs, and had suffered no particular upheavals in their lives
and habits. And it was a well-known fact that those who had done best of
all out of the tragedy of the last five years had been those who had proved
their patriotism by making massive profits out of war industries.

The aftermath years were a time of paradox, where
the men who returned from the horrors of the trenches wanted to forget, and
where those who had stayed behind, and had lost husbands and brothers, and
sons and fathers were equally determined never to forget. It was a world
where questioning whether the war had been right was attacked as a slur on
the memory of the dead.

It was a time where remembrance of the dead became
a way of life, and where it was somehow assumed that all the best, and the
finest young men of a generation had died. The other side of that assumption
was that those who had survived were somehow less than those who had
died.

It was also, and tragically, a time when a world
which had so emphatically declared that the horror of the last five years
had clearly been "a war to end all wars", was now heading inexorably towards
another even more widespread conflict.

Fresh from the Western front, Ella Wicklund arrived
in Salt Lake City in May 1916. She was returning from a year's service with
the British Expeditionary Force in Etaples, France, where she had treated
the wounded only thirty-five miles from the trenches. World War I changed
the lives of everyone. Even before the United States declared war in 1917,
the Great War touched this brave young nurse from Marysvale, Utah.

While doing post-graduate work in Chicago, she
had joined an American volunteer hospital unit bound for France. She sailed
for London in June 1915, and by the Fourth of July she was at the front.
From then until the next March 13, Wicklund worked day and night at a British
hospital with seventy-five American nurses and thirty-two American doctors
to save the lives of young men from England, Canada, Australia, Scotland
and Ireland.

Every bed was nearly always filled. "When we first
reached the hospital a large number of our cases were of soldiers suffering
from gas poisoning," Wicklund told The Salt Lake Tribune. "These patients
suffered more terribly than any of the others whom we cared for. At first
a great many of them died after suffering in terrible agony."

The nurse recalled the interminable stream of wounded.
About half the patients were surgical cases with bullet and shrapnel wounds.
Medical cases included such diseases as trench foot and gas poisoning. On
a bad night, 400 wounded soldiers who had fallen in Flanders fields arrived
at the hospital. "Some of them were literally torn to pieces by
shrapnel."

As Wicklund treated its casualties, modern warfare
was being invented in the trenches and skies of France. The war introduced
the widespread use of poison gas, tanks, airplanes, submarines and bombs.
To deal with the resulting carnage, modern medicine was being invented on
the battlefield.

The wounded were first treated in an emergency field
hospital before they went to a clearing station that did basic triage. Since
only two percent of the patients at the American hospital died, it appears
the English sent the most serious cases to their own surgeons. "I was
particularly struck with the bravery and assurance of the British soldiers,"
the young nurse said. "They bore their suffering without a murmur, and those
who died, died bravely."

The lives of thousands of these soldiers were wasted
by generals who ordered wave after wave of courageous young men and boys
to their deaths in No Man's Land. Somehow, these incompetent officers never
realized that Napoleon's tactics were useless in the face of massed machine
guns. The nurses were kept so busy that they were oblivious to the danger
surrounding them. "One cannot exaggerate the horrors of this terrible war,"
Wicklund said. "Indeed, one cannot find words to give even remotely a conception
of it to one who has not been near the trenches."

Some of the UK's oldest war veterans say they have
spent years trying to forget the horrors of the battlefields.

Below are a just few of their comments, but more
of their incredible memories are contained in the video interviews recorded
by BBC News 24.

One veteran went to France as a teenager in a spirit
of adventure but life in the trenches soon changed that. He said:
"I've seen men crouch in terror shouting 'mother'. We were only kids and
we were terrified. "If no-one was shot for desertion, there would
have been many more desertions."

Another who was wounded five times dreaded going
back to the front. "It is not how the pictures look - with beautiful
trenches and duck boards to walk on," he said. "We were in mud and we were
constantly in the rain."

A soldier, who lied about his age and was just
15 when he joined up, remembers the fear of being fired on by German
missiles. "When we started off on the job, I prayed to God and said
if I was hit, I hoped the first bullet would finish me off," he
said.

'D' DAY - NORMANDY - OMAHA BEACH

JUNE-6: At 05:30, on the morning of June 6, the
largest invasion force in history, 4,000 ships carrying 100,000 men, prepared
to land on the beaches of Normandy, France. The CBC's Matthew Halton reports
that the invasion of Europe is underway: "The weather didn't look too good,
but then the word came to go, and the greatest armadas ever seen steamed
out toward France.

It was the moment for the assault troops to go ashore,
following the sappers who were clearing gaps through the mines." Thousands
of American, British, and Canadian soldiers hit the beaches and began the
deadliest run of their lives. According to the war correspondent's version,
Canadian soldiers sneered at the German resistance.

The plan was that DD tanks would come ashore before
the infantry and after the ship artillery barrage to give the infantry covering
fire. On most beaches, the rough sea made that impossible, and several DD
tanks sank like stones, while others were brought directly to shore in landing
craft, instead of arriving before the infantry and providing covering fire.

The pre-invasion bombing and naval bombardment had
only had limited effect on the German fortifications. Some Canadian assault
units ran into heavy German defensive fire immediately, but some were luckier.
The 7th Brigade, on Mike beach, C Company of the Canadian Scottish, found
that its objective had already been destroyed by the navy's heavy guns. They
then moved inland with few casualties.

Just to their left, the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, two
assault companies, came under heavy fire before they landed. B company attacked
four German string points with any covering fire and suffered heavy casualties.
Only 25 men and one officer managed to get off the beach unharmed. The Regina
Rifles on the leftmost sector off the beach had been assigned to clear a
strong point in the village of Couselles-sur-Mer. They had a hard time of
it. The bombardment had not cracked the huge casement....[the] fortress had
reinforced concrete walls four feet thick and housed an 88-millimeter gun
as well as machine-guns. In addition there were concrete trenches outside
the fort liberally sprinkled with small arms posts. ....but eventually they
executed a left flanking attack and with the support of tanks succeeded in
breaking through the defenses

The Queen's Own A Company, on 8th Brigade's Nan
beach, took heavy casualties from German mortars and machine gun fire when
they landed in front of a new German position that was not on the map....the
approach to this gun was strewn with the bodies of Ontario's Queen's own
rifles. Half the regiment lay wounded or dead.

At Omaha, one in nineteen men landed on D-Day became
casualties (nearly 40,000 went ashore; there were 2,200 casualties. At Juno,
one in eighteen were killed or wounded (21,400 landed; 1,200 casualties).
The figures are misleading ... most men landed in the late morning or afternoon
at both beaches, but a majority of the casualties were taken in the first
hour. In the assault teams at both beaches the chances of being killed or
wounded were close to one in two.

Like most modern wars, World War II was a total
war, as described in Chapter 7. It aimed not only at the enemy's armies,
but at the people of the enemy's country. So it's not surprising that millions
of civilians were killed.

Hitler's armies and his later policies were certainly
more cruel than those of the Allies. Hitler ordered the Holocaust. Toward
the end of the war, he gave orders for all of Germany to be leveled rather
than surrender. And he destroyed himself by his own suicide, and millions
of soldiers and civilians by suicidal strategies like his attack on the Soviet
Union. At the same time, German soldiers, following policies laid down by
Hitler and Himmler, became known for their abusive treatment of prisoners
and civilians.

Yet many of the policies of the Allies caused terrible
damage--more, according to many historians, than was needed to win the war.
The so-called "area bombing" campaign--which today would be called "saturation
bombing" or "carpet bombing"--is an example. In 1940, the British set out
to destroy German military targets--oil refineries, munitions plants, etc.--by
bombing raids. They soon found that, if they flew by day, their bombers would
be shot down. And if they flew by night, their bombers didn't have the equipment
to bomb accurately. Rather than give up the bombing raids, Bomber Command
changed its targets to German cities. This was supposed to break German morale
and win the war.

In fact, "area bombing" probably did no such thing,
any more than German bombing of British cities broke English
morale.

Did the bombers win the war?...The answer...is
no. The German armies were fatally defeated by the Russians in July 1943
and at that point the bomber onslaught had barely begun and had caused no
decisive damage.

What the bombing did do was kill hundreds of thousands
of civilians and destroy hundreds of German cities--many, like Dresden, of
cultural but not military importance. The bombing campaign was controversial
even during the war. Its critics ranged from pacifists to military thinkers
like Liddell Hart. This doesn't, of course, prove that the Nazis were really
"good" and the Allies really "bad"--or even that, morally, there was nothing
to choose between them. But it shows that, in modern war, nobody's hands
are clean. Often both sides choose tactics which are morally questionable
and may even--as carpet bombing of cities does--violate international law.
That is the nature of modern war.

Both Communist and UN forces fought the Korean War
largely with surplus World War II weapons, presumably to help keep it from
escalating into WW III. Although newer series of infantry weapons, radios,
and vehicles had either been developed or were in production on both sides,
they were all largely withheld, along with nuclear weapons. From the infantry
point of view, the KW was an anachronism.

No milestone military developments arose from the
war. The US took innovative measures in logistical techniques, cold weather
clothing, and battlefield medical assistance MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital)
units, but the only significantly new developments were the use of helicopters
for reconnaissance, transport, and evacuation on a large scale, and the
employment of jet aircraft in combat. The most modern jet, the F-86 Sabre,
was deployed only when Communist forces first introduced their
MiG-15.

A sometimes unappreciated fact is that, at the
start of the KW, the US actually had no new conventional weapons, due to
a complete cessation of procurement for ground warfare following WWII. The
Communist bloc, fighting through its secondary powers, followed the same
course in employing old or obsolescent weaponry, however many Communist arms
were of more recent manufacture, or in better condition, than those in
American and ROK hands in 1950. At the start of the KW, the ROKs found themselves
facing 170 of perhaps the best tanks developed in WWII, with only satchel
charges (20 pounds of TNT, virtually useless against modern armor), the 2.36in.
rocket launcher, no medium artillery, and ... no tanks themselves at
all.

The Korean War was barely a month old in July 1950
when U.S. soldiers encountered hundreds of South Korean civilians traveling
by foot near No Gun Ri, a hamlet 100 miles southeast of Seoul. Advised by
their commanders to be on the lookout for North Korean soldiers infiltrating
the fleeing South Korean peasants, the U.S. Air Force strafed the civilians
in a surprise air attack, driving those who weren't killed to cover under
a nearby railroad bridge.

There, the refugees--many of them women, children,
and elderly men--only encountered more horror, as U.S. soldiers from the
First Cavalry Division directed machine-gun fire into the tunnel for three
long days and nights. By some accounts, 300 civilians died under the bridge
at No Gun Ri, and 100 perished in the initial air attack.

The massacre at No Gun Ri has been called one of
only two cases of large-scale killing of noncombatants by U.S. ground troops
in the 20th century; the other was Vietnam's My Lai, in which more than 500
Vietnamese civilians were killed.

Details of the My Lai massacre emerged by 1969,
within a year of that incident. But the dark secrets of No Gun Ri came to
light only last September--nearly 50 years after the killings. In an Associated
Press article coauthored by UCSC alumna Martha Mendoza, a dozen U.S. Army
veterans corroborated the story of the refugees who survived No Gun
Ri.

In the days following the Korean War, a new insidious
and dramatic weapon was unveiled to the horror of the American public:
brainwashing. "The men who went into battle in Korea against tanks
and minds of the communist forces had not been given a hint regarding Red
brain warfare," wrote journalist Edward Hunter, who is believed to have coined
the term "brainwashing" after a Chinese informant called the process "hsi
nao," or "cleansing the mind."

At the end of the Korean War, when 21 captured American
soldiers opted to stay with the enemy and hundreds more prisoners of war
came home accusing each other of collaborating with their captors, public
officials turned to brainwashing as the explanation.

"They are variants of well-known social psychological
principles of compliance, conformity, persuasion, dissonance, reactance,
framing, emotional manipulation and others that are used on all of us daily
to entice us: to buy, to try, to donate, to vote, to join, to change, to
believe, to love, to hate the enemy,

Cult expert Steven Hassan, who was himself a cult
member, is convinced that the Korean War POWs and Lindh were victims.
"I believe that with proper counseling, Lindh would be horrified at what
brainwashing has made him do," he said. Congressional hearings following
the Korean War prompted President Eisenhower to adopt a new Code of Conduct
for American soldiers in 1955.

It says: "If I am captured, I will continue to
resist by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and aid
others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the
enemy . . . I will never forget that I am an American, responsible for my
actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country
free."

Former Ohio Sen. John Glenn was a Marine aviator
flying with the Air Force during the Korean War. Glenn told the crowd that
"coming in the time shadow of World War IIís huge global scope, Korea
was small, but it was deadly." More than 37,000 Americans died in Korea between
1950 and 1953.

When the North Korean army poured over the 38th
parallel, the communist leadership did not think the United States would
go to war for South Korea. "After all, Americans didn't want another war;
the blood still hadn't dried from World War II," Clinton said

Secretary Cohen reminded the veterans that Americans
still stand guard in South Korea. "Some 37,000 Americans -- almost the same
number who died in the war -- are still standing for freedom in Korea," he
said. "Soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines serve alongside the South Korean
counterparts astride what has been called the worldís most dangerous
border."

Half a century ago, the United States entered the
Korean War with a military made up of many parts, a mix of war- scarred sergeants
toughened by the hard lessons of Guadalcanal, Okinawa and Normandy, and a
new generation of soldiers who had only seen war on the silver screen," he
said. "It was a segregated force of white, black and Hispanic, and a
newly created Air Force. After three long, bloody years, we ended the battle
with a military that was one of the most coherent fighting forces the world
has ever known -- integrated, experienced, ready to face the Cold War."

Tens of thousands of political prisoners face
starvation, torture and summary execution in prison camps in North Korea,
according to the testimony of a prisoner to a US Senate inquiry.

In a detailed, frequently harrowing first-hand
description of conditions inside Kaechon camp and other detention centres
run by North Korea's communist regime, Soon Ok Lee has told the inquiry of
apparent biological and chemical weapons experiments on prisoners.

She said she had witnessed numerous other atrocities,
including the murder of newborn babies by guards and doctors. "While
I was there, three women delivered babies on the cement floor without blankets,"
Ms Soon told a Senate judiciary sub-committee chaired by the Democrat Edward
Kennedy. "It was horrible to watch the prison doctor kicking the pregnant
women with his boots. When a baby was born, the doctor shouted, 'Kill it
quickly. How can a criminal expect to have a baby? Kill it.'

"The women covered their faces with their hands
and wept. Even though the deliveries were forced by injection, the babies
were still alive when born. The prisoner-nurses, with trembling hands, squeezed
the babies' necks to kill them," Ms Soon said.

Ms Soon, who was first arrested in 1984, said she
was tortured in pre-trial interrogation before being sentenced to a 13-year
jail term for crimes against the state.

She said she had managed to survive in the camp
only because, with a background as an accountant, she had been given work
keeping the camp's records. She was released in an amnesty in 1992 and escaped
to South Korea in 1995.

Despite the time that has elapsed since the events
she describes took place, international human rights organisations and
independent Korean groups say executions, torture and other serious abuses
continue in the camps.

One group, the non-governmental Citizens' Alliance
for North Korean Human Rights, has published testimony from other camp survivors.
In one such account, Yong Kim described the horrors of "No 14 political prison",
where he was held until he escaped in 1998 and made his way to South Korea
the following year.

The total number of prisoners held in the North
Korean gulag is not known but one current estimate puts it at about 200,000,
held in 12 or more centres. A source on the Democrat-controlled judiciary
committee said the location of many camps had been identified and there were
plans to publish satellite photographs of them.

Amnesty International's latest annual report says
that North Korea continues to refuse access to independent observers,
that executions for political offences are continuing, and that freedom of
religion is severely restricted.

"Several thousand Christians were being held in
labour camps where they reportedly faced torture, starvation and death,"
Amnesty said.

The UN human rights committee and the EU expressed
serious concerns about human rights to Pyongyang last year.

Senator Sam Brownback, who sits on the judiciary
sub-committee, said: "North Korea is today's 'killing field' where millions
of people considered politically hostile or agitators - or just being innocent
children - starve to death while those in power enjoy luxurious lifestyles."

Ms Soon told Congress that prison inmates were
frequently tortured with electricity and water and were used as targets when
guards practised martial arts skills.

There were also frequent public executions at Kaechon
of "anti-party elements" and "reactionaries". It was not unusual for prisoners
to be driven to suicide.

She said secret executions were also carried out
using a small compression chamber. Prisoners were forced inside and then
the temperature was adjusted to produce lethal extremes of heat or
cold. Such executions happened "at midnight, without trial, and [they] bury
the corpses in a nearby valley".

Ms Soon said that the estimated 6,000 prisoners
in the jail when she was first incarcerated had nearly all died by the time
of her release five years later.

"About 1,000 prisoners died each year and a fresh
supply was obtained each year in order to meet the quotas."

North Korea is a closed society and there are no
direct means of verifying Ms Soon's testimony. But a judiciary committee
source in Washington said her account gave an accurate picture.

"It's all true. I don't think she was exaggerating
at all," the source said. "What she said is confirmed by several other
independent groups."

There is considerable concern in South Korea after
a naval skirmish on June 29 that left more than a dozen people dead. South
Korea's official policy is one of reunification with the North, and it regards
all North Koreans as Korean citizens.

A spokesman for Human Rights Watch said the continuance
of serious human rights abuses in North Korea was "not in doubt" and was
a contributory factor, along with persistent famine conditions, to the growing
North Korean refugee problem now affecting north-east China.

Dozens of asylum-seekers have tried to force their
way into foreign embassies in China while unknown numbers have been forcibly
repatriated to North Korea, where they face imprisonment or death.

Last year Amnesty International drew attention
to the "humanitarian crisis" on the North Korean-Chinese border and called
for the UN refugee agency to be allowed access to the area. But so far China
has not complied. Current estimates put the number of displaced North Koreans
in China at between 100,000 and 300,000. Meanwhile, the number of defections
to South Korea is soaring, with last year's total twice that for
2000.

The findings of the Senate hearings, held on June
21, may have a significant influence on Washington's current attempt to decide
whether to revive the policy of engagement with the regime which was pursued
by Bill Clinton, or to further isolate a country President George Bush has
called a "rogue state" and part of the "axis of evil". Staff on the Senate
committee said the hearings had "helped put the spotlight" on North Korea's
human rights problems.

"They have forced the administration to look more
closely at the question of the refugees," one source said.

The growing crisis over North Korea is also likely
to have an impact on US and European relations with China, North Korea's
main ally. In a speech in Beijing this week, the British foreign secretary,
Jack Straw, drew attention to concerns about North Korea's ballistic missile
programme, but he made no specific mention of North Korea's abuse of its
own people.

In 1967, the final day of what became at that point
the bloodiest single battle of the war, the battle for two hills numbered
881 and 861, about 550 Marines were killed or wounded in the week that it
took them to capture both hills.

U.S. soldiers burned an entire village
because many GIs had been killed by heavy fire from that
village.

A reporter says, During the fall of Saigon,
"I ran down the street to gauge the reaction of these South Vietnamese soldiers
and police officers coming into the center of the city to stack their weapons
and surrender," he said. "I walked up to a police colonel to get his reaction.
He looked crazed. As I approached him, I had my notebook in hand and he was
fingering his holstered pistol. I thought 'This guy's gonna kill me.' "I
started to ease away from him. Instead, he pulled out his weapon, put it
to his own head and fell mortally wounded at my feet." I saw little children
being slaughtered," he said. "I saw a lot of American veterans whose lives
were messed up in Vietnam through no fault of their own. We never really
told the veterans, 'Thank you for a job well done.' They were there under
the worst of circumstances and still served their country well."

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder emerged in the aftermath
of the Vietnam War when veterans were having difficulties overcoming the
brutal events they had participated in and, unlike previous wars, returned
home not to the glory of marching bands and public cheers, but to criticism
and official cover-up of the Vietnam horrors.

Most of the soldiers suffered the effects of
participating in "atrocities, seeing grotesquely mutilated bodies, or going
on particularly dangerous missions." Those who suffered the mental effects
of this were experiencing battle fatigue, or in other words, exhaustion.
But as Kutchins and Kirk state, " military psychiatrists, far from
identifying battle fatigue as early warning, were involved in the exact opposite
strategy; namely, minimizing the seriousness of the complaints and pushing
soldiers back into combat as quickly as possible

With all the horrible pain and gore the soldiers
had to see and endure, they could never be the people they once were. Supporters
and protesters back in the U.S. were causing chaos. The Doves and the Hawks,
the Doves against the war and the Hawks supporting the war, divided a country.

The Vietnam War took its toll on the American soldiers.
When they returned home, they were different people. They didnt look
the same, they didnt act the same, they werent the same. Some
could not hold on to their sanity in light of what they had seen and been
through. In order to take the soldiers minds off the horrors all around them
the U.S. command brought in boatloads of toys for the men to play with,
everything from go-carts to violins. There was surfing, sailing, and miniature
golfing. Almost everyone got a chance to spend a day or two at the beach
pretending that he wasnt in Vietnam. Large bases had Olympic size swimming
pools and air-conditioned libraries, softball fields, and basketball courts.
Even the toughest of bases had a net and a volleyball.

American victories in ground battles in South Vietnam
also failed to sharply reduce the number of enemy troops there. The U.S.
Army and Marines usually won whenever they fought the enemy. But North Vietnam
replaced its loses with new troops. Its forces often avoided defeat by retreating
into Laos and Cambodia

North Vietnam and the Viet Cong turned a new page
of the war on January 30, 1968, when they attacked major cities of South
Vietnam. The fighting was especially savage in Saigon, the capitol of South
Vietnam, and in Hue. This campaign began at the start of Tet , the Vietnamese
New Year celebration. It came to be known as the Tet Offensive.

As a military strategy, the plan was flawed. The
United States and South Vietnam quickly recovered their early losses, and
the enemy suffered an enormous amount of casualties. But the Tet attacks
shocked the American people. The United States had about 500,000 troops in
South Vietnam, and U.S. leaders had reported strong winnings just a short
time before. Many Americans wondered whether blocking Communist growth was
worth the loss in lives and money. The government should have just defeated
the Communists altogether.

The Tet offensive forced basic changes in
Johnsons policies. The President cut back the bombing of North Vietnam
and rejected Westmorelands request for 206,000 additional troops. Johnson
also called for peace negotiations and declared that he would not seek reelection
in 1968. Peace talks began in Paris in May.

Opposition to the war in the United States grew
quickly during Nixions 1 World Book Encyclopedia pp. 391,392 presidency.
Some opposition developed as a result of television coverage of the war,
which brought scenes of war horrors in millions of homes.

In March 1971, the conviction of Lieutenant William
L. Calley, Jr., for war crimes raised some of the main moral issues of the
conflict. Calleys Army unit had massacred at least 100 and maybe as
many and 200 civilians in 1968 in the hamlet of My Lai in South Vietnam.
Calley was found guilty of murder and was sentenced to jail for 10 years.
Some war critics used the trial to call attention to the large numbers of
killed by U.S. bombing and ground operations in South Vietnam. Other pointed
to the vast stretches of countryside that had been destroyed by bombing and
by spraying of chemicals. U.S. forces used such weedkillers as Agent Orange
to reveal Communist hiding places in the jungle and to destroy enemy food
crops.

In March 1972, North Vietnam began a full scale
invasion of South Vietnam. Nixon retaliated by restarting the bombing on
North Vietnam. He also had explosives planted in the Haiphong harbor, North
Vietnams major port for importing military supplies. These things helped
stop the invasion which was almost to Saigon by August 1972.

The enemys plan obviously worked. They got
their main concern, the U.S., to withdraw and they knew that they probably
would not return. Thousands of South Vietnamese civilians fled with the soldiers
during the invasion by the North. Most died from either gun wounds or starvation.
This all should have been avoided at the beginning. The United States should
have fought to win. In war there should never be any half-way
commitments.

If there was one photograph that captured the horrific
nature of the Vietnam war, one photograph that tore at our collective conscience,
it was the picture of a nine year old girl, running naked down a road, screaming
in agony from the jellied gasoline coating her body and burning through skin
and muscle down the bone. Her village in the Central Highlands of Vietnam
was napalmed that day in 1972, and the little girl took a direct hit. It
would take many years, and 17 operations to save her life. And when she finally
felt well enough to put it behind her, that very photograph would make her
a victim, all over again.

I was a few miles outside of my cabin where I was
stationed, trying to relax, when all of a sudden a huge mortar shell landed
near me and shrapnel went flying all around me. I tried to duck but it was
too late. Much of it landed all around me and in my head. I went to the medical
station covered in blood. When I got there, I was unsure of what to expect.
I asked the doctor if my injury was Purple Heart material (Purple Heart is
a medal awarded to a soldier for an injury received in war.). However, he
easily removed the shrapnel from my head and replied, "Your head is not going
to earn you one but your leg sure as hell will." As I looked down at my leg,
it was all destroyed. I hadn't even noticed. Later I received a Purple Heart
for my leg. I still have shrapnel in my leg and it's difficult for me to
walk, but I thank God everyday for allowing me to live through it.

LURP DOG - by B. D. TRAIL

The Lurps* had shot them at about dawn-- VC
tax-collectors and a propaganda team For there were piaster notes and banners
everywhere.

The noonday sun had cooked the dead, Their bodies
were swollen, their smell that familiar Choking, throat-catching
nausea.

The Lurps, still high on dexadrine, Played to the
audience of visitors By posing near the bodies--big game hunters.

With CAR-15s and face paint, tiger-striped Fatigues
and airborne earrings, the vacant-eyed Killers strutted about the
bodies.

There was a dog there too, a Doberman. The handler
proudly pointed out the scar Where its vocal cords had been cut--a silent
hunter of men.

The dog lapped at a pool of jellied brains. A mass
of black flies crawled over Skull fragments and bloody grass.

As the chopper lifted off, The blades blew money,
posters, and fragments Of men across the killing zone.

Argentina: In a court of law, Caraballo revealed
that out of the nearly 3000 political prisoners who had passed through El
Campito, a large number had been tortured and either beaten to death or shot
in the back of the neck. He also told the court about detainees who were
thrown into the sea after being injected with sedatives, and said that "in
some cases, the victims' bellies were cut open so that they would sink faster
and be eaten by sharks".

Al-Amariyeh is the bomb shelter in a middle-class
section of the capital where more than 1,200 people were incinerated early
one morning during the war. The gaping crater in the shelter's ceiling--dubbed
the "Bush Hole"--today looks much as it must have four-and-a-half years ago.
Cables and wires dangle from the jagged orifice, diffusing the daylight that
illuminates an eerie scene. The blackened walls of the shelter are lined
with framed photographs of people who died there--some entire families, but
mostly women and children, since males over age 16 were required to be at
the front. Crowding the pictures is a profusion of flowers and family
mementos.

One corner of the shelter is a dark patchwork of
human skin, small hands and feet appliqued to the ceiling by the heat of
the second missile that dove through "the Bush Hole" seconds after the first
one cleared the way, bringing temperatures in the shelter to 4,000 degrees
centigrade.

On a nearby wall, it looks as if someone has sketched
a smudgy charcoal picture of a woman in a long robe, her facial features
slightly smeared, and next to her, a similar life-sized image of a mother
nursing her infant. Upon closer inspection it's clear that the medium is
not charcoal, but flesh, the artist a U.S. missile that vaporized human beings
into a timeless testimony of the atrocities of war. Not a "clean war," a
dirty, brutal war.

RUWEISHED, Jordan, Jan. 20, 1991Refugees
arriving at this Jordanian border post today spoke of civilian casualties,
of the terror of bombs landing near and -- in some cases -- hitting residential
areas of Baghdad and Mosul, and of cars loaded with coffins at the southern
port city of Basra.

Fleeing overland from Iraq and Kuwait, the Palestinian
and Lebanese refugees described a creeping fear of death among Iraqis along
with horror and dismay as aerial attacks by U.S.-led allied forces continued
for the fourth straight day.

In the Iraqi capital, the refugees said, residents
are cut off from the rest of the country and from one another, not knowing
what is happening in other areas of town.

"People wait for the sirens, but they only come
on after the first raid," said Nidal Khalil, a mechanic, who said he and
his family had been living without lights or water since last week. "After
the first strike early Thursday, and with second and third air attacks on
Baghdad, the bombing seemed less selective," Khalil remarked. "At first,
the Iraqis felt confident."

"When the planes come, people run left and right
and look for basements and shelters," said Yaaqoub Chahine, a teacher, who
described himself as a "stateless" Palestinian who lived in Kuwait and now
is looking for a new home. "People have started hating these air raids. They
live in constant horror, fearing death in their shelters. Their faces are
pale, their bodies tremble from the unknown. This is the reality," Chahine
said grimly.

While some refugees expressed enthusiasm and support
for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's confrontation with the U.S.-led alliance,
their zeal seemed tempered and they were visibly shaken by their hazardous
trip.

A young Jordanian mother, rocking a 2-year-old
baby in her arms as she stood in the cold desert wind at Ruweishid, said
her children were "hysterical."

Hiyam Naji Rashid said she decided to leave with
her children after her neighborhood was struck repeatedly on the first morning
of the allied air strikes. "We were at home in {the Baghdad district of}
Doura. There was an air raid every two hours. The planes came three times.
There were no casualties in our quarter, but people are terrified," Hiyam
said.

"No one was expecting this to happen. We have never
seen anything like it. Not in eight years of war with Iran," she said as
she tried to console her son, Rami, who was crying uncontrollably.

Umm Mohammed, 54, was among the most shaken of
today's arrivals. Straining to maintain composure, the Palestinian mother
of seven said she was on the verge of collapse.

"My children screamed all night. They all piled
up on top of me. My eldest son Mohammed was taken with {Iraq's} Popular Army
to Kuwait. We know what is happening there. He may never come back. . . .
I guess he went voluntarily with them," she said slowly.

"With the war against Iran, we knew what to expect,
now with the Americans, it is different. People are just abandoning their
homes. We have still not recovered from the war with Iran," she
said.

Umm Mohammed said most Iraqis she knew would have
preferred a diplomatic solution to the gulf crisis. "We want them to stop
this war now. We also want {Iraq} to stop this shelling against Israel, because
they have children, too. But {the Israelis} must get out of our land. Let
them stop from all sides. All mothers think like this," she said.

"To hell with all the oil, but please protect our
young men," she added, as tears started rolling down her cheeks.

Chahine, the Palestinian teacher, said Saddam's
strike against Israel had made him happy at first. "I first thought that
this is a great lesson. This is how I felt about Kuwaitis when Iraq invaded.
But then {the Iraqis} stayed and things got very bad."

Chahine said he left behind a pregnant daughter
who was about to deliver, and he feared she would go into labor during an
air raid. She had a book on natural childbirth, he added, which she presumably
would use if she could not make it to a hospital.

Fares Yahya Rashid, 28, said the suburbs of Baghdad
have been shelled. "People are trying to preserve themselves. Only a few
gasoline stations are open and people are living on hoarded food, no electricity
or water," he said.

Rashid said the presidential palace and a building
in central Baghdad housing much of the city's telecommunications hardware
"have suffered minor damage." Other reports, however, suggested the presidential
palace has been more extensively damaged.

The residential neighborhoods of Jadriyyah and
Qadissiyya, and the Doura central bus station, were also hit, according to
a group of refugees who reached here from Baghdad today. Rasid said that
some of the bombing has hit the residential area of Hayy Al Mansour, and
university student Mahmoud Lati said a church was almost flattened in the
northern city of Mosul.

"On the first morning after the raid, a bus full
of people at Doura was hit, when the planes came in the daytime," one man
said. Half a dozen others interviewed separately confirmed the
report.

"Now there are no taxis, no transport, and each
of us knows only what happens in his area," said Youssef Boutros Baqaa, 22.
"Last night, some kind of rocket fell near our home in Jadriyyah. The bombing
is not precise."

Taxi driver Abdul Wahab Massoud held up a large
round fragment of green metal imprinted with English lettering from what
he said was a downed American plane.

Massoud accompanied Nimr Madi, a Palestinian who
had driven from Kuwait to Baghdad and then to the Jordanian border. Madi
said he saw three cars full of bodies and coffins at a gas station in
Basra.

"There are many civilian casualties in Basra and
Kuwait. I saw many coffins in Basra, some of them small," Madi said, adding
that an oil refinery in Basra had been hit. e described nighttime raids over
Kuwait as "very intensive" and said heavy anti-aircraft fire there "turns
the sky into a kind of hell."

"When the planes come to hit a target they also
hit homes around them," Madi said.

PRIZREN, Kosovo (CNN) -- On the surface, Kosovar
Albanians seem to be doing their best to return to a normal life. The streets
of Kosovo's cities are teeming with activity, shops have reopened for business
and many are working on rebuilding their destroyed homes.

But the queues of patients in hospital corridors
tell a different story, revealing the deep wounds of last spring's campaign
of murder, torture and forced evacuation of ethnic Albanians at the hands
of Serb forces.

Most of the patients in Prizren's hospital are
suffering from post-traumatic stress from the war.

"They have anxiety, fear, flashbacks of all the
events they experienced, nightmares, isolation from their environment," said
psychiatric neurologist Dr. Zylfie Hundozi.

There aren't enough experts to cope with the huge
numbers of people who need counseling. So volunteers from other countries
are offering crash courses in psychotherapy to general practice doctors,
nurses and even social workers.

"We are training professionals and the concept
of community mental health and psychological counseling may be new to them,
but interacting with people is not," said Carol Etherington, a mental health
nurse for Doctors without Borders.

Mental health care professionals say there isn't
a man, woman or child in Kosovo who hasn't been touched by the war in one
way or another. The counselors' primary task is to teach the population that
it's normal to suffer from stress. But first, the counselors must recognize
they may be victims of post-traumatic stress themselves.

"The first task is to heal ourselves," said general
practitioner Dr. Sulejman Krasniqi. "We were so terrified. For example, I
was during the whole bombing time in Prizren and I passed so many terrible
moments."

A community-wide information campaign is planned
to persuade people to seek help. Experts hope that getting people to talk
about the past and release their stress will give them new hope for the
future.

per CNN news

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Monday, 6 December, 1999

Horrors of Kosovo revealed

Mass graves containing the bodies of Kosovo
Albanians have been discovered

A grim catalogue of mutilation, murder and rape
in Kosovo is unveiled in a major human rights report published by the
Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

Testimony gathered by OSCE monitors from more than
3,000 witnesses and refugees builds a detailed picture of recent events in
Kosovo. It says massive human rights abuses were carried out by Serbian
forces on Kosovo Albanians.

This was followed by revenge attacks against remaining
Serbs after Belgrade withdrew its troops from the province.

"The evidence of recent violations indicates that
the cycle of violence has not yet been broken," the head of the OSCE mission
in Kosovo, Ambassador Daan Everts, wrote in the introduction.

The report outlines a series of human rights abuses
committed between 1998 and June this year when the territory was still under
Serbian control.

This, the report says, was the result of a deliberate
planned strategy by the government of Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic.

The OSCE says Serb attacks increased after Nato
began its bombing campaign, and summary and arbitrary killing spread throughout
Kosovo.

Among the worst incidents, it says, were reports
of the deliberate killing of children, and of elderly and disabled people
being shot or burned alive.

There are accounts of children decapitated in front
of their parents and refugees suffocating to death in crowded
trains.

Revenge attacks

Human rights monitors have also been watching the
climate of intolerance and revenge that has been sweeping the province since
the arrival of Nato peacekeepers in June.

They detail human rights violations such as executions,
abductions and intimidation, directed mainly against Serbs and other
minorities.

One of the worst examples occurred in the US-controlled
sector of Gnjilane, which had been largely untouched by the war, the report
says.

But between June and October, almost 280 properties
owned by Serbs and other minorities were either burned or
destroyed.

Furthermore, the Roma, or Gypsy, population has
left en masse, monitors say, and daily human rights reports in June, July
and August were dominated by accounts of killings, house burnings, missing
persons and abductions.

But the report draws a distinction between the
abuses in the past and the violations that are continuing.

'Policy of apartheid'

Bernard Kouchner, the UN's special envoy to Kosovo,
says in the report's introduction that there had been a systematic policy
of apartheid against Kosovo Albanians for at least a decade, but this was
no longer the case.

The monitors say that many of those involved in
attacks on Serbs appear to have been members of the Kosovo Liberation Army
or its successor organisation, the Kosovo Protection Corps.

The KLA waged a 15-month guerrilla campaign against
Serb rule.

"It is clear that the (KLA) stepped in to fill
a law and order void, but this 'policing' role is unrestrained by law and
without legitimacy," the report said.

BBC News Online

A Reminder of the Horrors of War

By Dzulkifli Abdul Razak

To commemorate the 53rd anniversary of the Hiroshima
bombing today, the National Poison Centre will launch a homepage on its
devastation and human suffering. Dzulkifli Abdul Razak
writes.

Just last May, for example, India and Pakistan
were involved in a tit-for-tat display of nuclear capabilities. About a dozen
nuclear devices were reported to have been exploded in less than three weeks
in the Indian subcontinent. This, soon after the world had barely recovered
from the shock decision ot resume a series of nuclear tests conducted near
the Mururoa Atoll in the South Pacific in 1995 and 1996.

In May the year before, China too exploded its
own nuclear bomb. Nuclear armament is fast becoming a threat in the Asia
Pacific Region. All in all more than 2,000 nuclear tests were recorded between
1945 and 1998 worldwide.

Ironically, the United State of America exploded
more than 1000 devices (between 1945 and 1992 alone), followed by Russia
Soviet Union with more than 700 (between 1949 and 1990) and France 210 (between
1960 and 1996). The others are made up of the United Kingdom apart from China
and most recently Pakistan.

Although everyone knew of the disastrous effects
of bomb, many more countries are developing nuclear capabilities. In fact
the atom bombs that were exploded on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 1945
are said to pale in comparison with many of the newer nuclear devices. By
any account they have been without precedent since the last two
millennia.

Numerous documentations and eyewitness accounts
were recorded on the Atomic tragedy of 1945.

To commemorate the 53rd year of the Hiroshima and
Nagasaki bombing, the National Poison Centre based at Universiti Sains Malaysia
has created a special homepage on the event to serve as remainder to all
Malaysians about the horors of war - particularly nuclear war.

Titled
Hiroshima Dalam
Ingatan (Hiroshima in My Mind), it focuses on Abdul Razak's first-hand
experience on the tragedy. It touches the ordinary people in the street with
vivid descriptions of what the devastation meant years ago and how relevant
it is still today.

The articles are both in
English and
Bahasa Malaysia and
there are more than 25 articles of various lengths extracted from the various
media (including the NST), some dating back more than 10 years ago. All the
articles trace Abdul Razak's experiences since
the age of 18 (when he first enrolled at Japan Education Institute in Durian
Daun, Malacca in 1942) until he became
head of the "Look East"
programme at the Mara Institute of Technology more than 50 years later.
He retired recently.

Incorporated in another section of the homepage
is a gallery of about
30 original photographs that were kept by Abdul Razak. These include photographs
of two other Malaysians, Nik
Yusof and Syed Omar who were killed in the
bombing. There are also photographs of the late
Tan Sri Eusoffe
Abdoolcader - a contemporary of Haji Abdul Razak while in
Japan.

The homepage will also provide
general information
on the broader issues about the bombing of Hiroshima. There are also selected
links to similar recommended websites worldwide. These links provide very
comprehensive information about the subject matter from various perspectives.
Some incorporate very graphic visuals, including a rare footage from
CNN.

The compilation and creation of the homepage are
done so that a permanent record of the Atomic mass killing particularly in
Hiroshima is made and can be readily accessible to Malaysians.

It is hoped that the
"Hiroshima In My Mind"
Homepage will serve as a continuous reminder to all of us that war is barbaric
and uncivilised and also serve as a Malaysian contribution towards heightening
global awareness on nuclear disarmament.

The homepage will officially open at precisely
8.15am tomorrow to coincide with the 53rd Anniversary of the Atomic Bombing
of Hiroshima. It could be reached via the National Poison Centre Homepage
- http://prn.usm.my
directly via
http://prn.usm.my/my.html

The Ministry of Defence was accused in the high
court yesterday of a systematic failure to prepare service personnel for
the horrors of war and provide adequate care for them afterwards.

More than 250 survivors of recent conflicts suffering
from post traumatic stress disorder are suing the ministry in an unprecedented
group action. Though the case will concentrate on the experience of 15
individuals - veterans of the Falklands conflict, Northern Ireland, Bosnia
and the Gulf war - nearly 2,000 potential claimants have registered an interest
in the lawsuit.

At the start of the case, which is expected to
last for at least five months, Stephen Irwin QC told Mr Justic Owen: "War
is a uniquely horrible human activity... and it causes injury to
mind."

He emphasised the claimants were not suing the
MoD for exposure to war. "War is what soldiers should expect and it is what
they sign up for - it is what they join the army for."

Mr Irwin added: "It is also what their masters
should expect and they should provide for this exposure to the horrors of
war. In a sentence we say they did not. They didn't do it systematically,
and so far as they had a system, it did not work properly to protect and
care for soldiers, sailors and airmen in the forces."

Mr Irwin suggested that the MoD's "systemic failure"
to deal with the problem was partly due to a "macho" culture within the forces
towards psychiatric problems. Some commanders felt it was a "blot on their
escutcheon" to have mentally injured men under their command.

A "huge body of knowledge" about the psychological
and psychiatric consequences of exposure to war was available.

The symptoms, said Mr Irwin, included social
dislocation, alcoholism, and depression. Veterans had suffered prolonged
personality disorders following exposure to stress.

Key features of post traumatic stress disorder
were flashbacks and anxiety levels reaching pathologcial levels, he told
the court.

He mentioned the servicemen who had survived the
bombing of the ship Sir Galahad during the Falklands war. He referred to
the helplessness of those who could not retaliate, what he described as "a
most difficult situation to handle".

Mr Irwin asked: "Why are service people different?"
He said the the MoD had a "uniquely high degree of control over their lives,
both as to their daily lives and to their health care". Service personnel
were often very young and "often inexperienced in life".

He continued: "In battle they face unimaginable
stress, stress to a level which one cannot understand without a conscious
effort or without experience. They are facing an occupation which carries
psychological and psychiatric risks at the most extreme end of the
spectrum."

It was reckoned that 25% of those sleeping rough
were ex-service personnel.

Figures showed that 264 Falklands veterans had
committed suicide, compared with the 255 who died in the war.

Mr Irwin referred to the trauma suffered
by:

· A 19-year-old man from the north of England
who as he walked in a Bosnian village, breathing in smoke and fearful of
crossfire, saw a pregnant woman tied to a post with her belly ripped open
and a dead dog stuffed into the cavity.

· A young west country man who saw eight of
his colleagues blown up by a bomb.

· A lad on a ship in the Falklands war who
saw his best mate burned to death.

Mr Irwin said the claimants had offered to resolve
the case by mediation rather than pursue a lawsuit which could cost more
than £12m.

The MoD is disputing claims that it failed to diagnose
and adequately treat post traumatic stress disorder.

Horrors of War -- Dead Chinese floating in the
Beiho, showing riddled Buildings along the French Bund, Tianjin

Many talk of the horrors of war who know little
of their actualities, and for that reason such a scene as this, though it
is repulsive, is also educative; for, to know truly, you must see, and even
this repellent scene is but a slight hint of war's horrors. For ten days
before I came here, dead bodies, in incredible numbers, had been floating
down the river, and, several times a day coolies were sent to this place
with poles to set free the accumulation of bodies and allow them to float
down stream. At this moment, you see, there are only four or five in view,
but at other times there are large numbers, especially in the morning, after
a night's accumulation. At times I have seen heads and headless trunks in
this flotsam of war. Many of these dead have been killed by the relief troop
who first entered Tianjin; others, by the second advance of reenforcements,
and many, previously, by the Boxers and were probably Christian converts.
Doubtless a considerable number also are suicides, for the Chinese have a
penchant for suicide at such times.

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (UMNS) -- In its eight-year
civil war, Sierra Leone has seen some of the worst violations of human rights
in the world.

While it is impossible to give accurate figures
for the number of casualties, the Human Rights Watch reported last June that
"perhaps 50,000 people have died and up to [half] the population of 4.5 million
is displaced."

During their January 1999 occupation of Freetown,
Sierra Leone's capital, the Revolutionary United Front killed thousands of
people, massacring scores of civilians who were hiding in houses, churches
and mosques. Entire neighborhoods were burned down, and an estimated 51,000
people were left homeless.

A six-member team of American United Methodists
witnessed some of the devastation during a February visit to Sierra Leone.
While attending the 120th Sierra Leone Annual Conference session Feb. 22-27,
the group visited United Methodist churches and schools in Freetown, and
heard accounts from people who had survived the horrors of war.

Many schools were destroyed in the war, so churches
are being used for classrooms. Students go to school in two shifts, morning
and afternoon, to accommodate the growing number of young people whose families
have fled the rural areas.

At a displacement camp organized by the government,
the Americans met a woman who said rebels had burned her out of her home
five times. An elderly man described how his wife and two sons were killed
before his eyes. Other people told of how they were given only two to three
days' worth of bulgur (wheat) as their food ration for a month.

The U.S. group heard stories of how three or four
families were forced to live in cramped quarters, with no electricity or
plumbing. They also learned about United Methodist pastors who were homeless,
and of some who had been reduced to begging to provide for their
families.

Part of the Freetown tour included a stop at a
camp for amputees and others wounded or mutilated by rebel soldiers. There,
the Americans met an 8-month-old girl whose arm was severed by rebels when
she was 2 weeks old.

The U.S. group met Muctur Jalloh, a student in
his 20s, who serves as chairman of the amputee camp. Many people who have
been mutilated choose not to come to the camps, Jalloh said. Most of the
people at his camp were from areas outside Freetown. Some were teachers,
students, parents and children.

The rebels would taunt spiritual people while torturing
them, saying, "Where is Jesus? Where is your God?" Jalloh said.

Jalloh's right hand and right ear were cut off.
He said the rebels severed his right hand instead of his left because they
knew he was a student, and the loss of his right hand would be a greater
handicap.

Later, he had the opportunity to meet the man who
had mutilated him. The man didn't remember Jalloh at first, but when he did,
the former rebel offered the student money.

"I don't want your money," Jalloh replied. "I have
forgiven you and have peace in my heart; you don't."

Many people have forgiven the rebels, but their
lives still need to go on, Jalloh said. They still need
assistance.

"How," he asked, "can a man take care of his family
when he has no hands?"

In the armed conflicts of recent years, children
have been not only unintended victims but deliberate targets of violence.
The number of children who have been directly affected is enormous. Millions
of them have been killed, disabled, orphaned, sexually exploited and abused,
abducted and recruited as soldiers, uprooted from their homes, separated
from their families, and faced with heightened risk of disease and
malnutrition.

Land-mines are a contemporary scourge. They do
not discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. They kill and maim
children as well as adults, turn farmland into waste battleground and rip
through the heart of civilized society. Land-mines are unjustifiable weapons
that increase the danger to children in armed conflict. They must be
banned.

Tens of millions of anti-personnel mines are destroying
the lives of children in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America. Every day
these hidden horrors kill or horribly mutilate children, predominantly in
rural developing communities.

The use of these deadly devices where they pose
a threat to children clearly violates the United Nations Convention on the
Rights of the Child, including, of course, the provisions under which States
are obliged to protect children in armed conflict. It goes against the commitment
made by more than 150 countries at the 1990 World Summit for Children to
ensure the safety of children and their families in time of war, including
the observance of periods of tranquillity and the establishment of relief
corridors.

Once laid, an anti-personnel mine can remain active
for as long as 50 years. Land-mines placed today may still be killing and
maiming children in the middle of the next century.

Land-mines are particularly catastrophic for children
whose small bodies cannot withstand the horrific injuries they inflict. Competing
demands for scarce medical services mean that children injured by mines seldom
receive the treatment and care they deserve.

The blight of land-mines often goes beyond localized
destruction. The widespread practice of mining fertile agricultural land
has led to malnutrition and even famine and starvation. Mines laid along
roads and tracks have prevented the safe repatriation of refugees and impeded
the delivery of aid. Where the environment itself is desecrated, there is
no chance for sustainable development.

Most countries cannot afford to demine all civilian
areas. An anti-personnel mine can be bought for as little as US$3 but can
cost as much as US$1,000 to remove. Efforts to clear minefields often cannot
keep up with the speed at which new mines can be laid.

I believe that it is unconscionable that the
humanitarian objectives to anti-personnel land-mines should be disputed.
That is why, when addressing the Human Rights Commission in Geneva in March,
I said: "Given the cruel and inhumane intention of these weapons and their
growing cost in human and economic terms--and the increasing toll they are
taking among children--I would like to add my voice to that of the International
Committee of the Red Cross and urge the international community to go one
critical step further and adopt a total ban on the production, use, stockpiling,
sale and export of anti-personnel land-mines." The world's children are depending
on us to rid the globe of these cruel and inhumane weapons.
James P. Grant Executive Director, UNICEF

Land-mines are shattering the lives of children
and their communities in more than 60 countries. There are an estimated 100
million of these deadly devices, one for every 20 children. It is estimated
that land-mines have killed or injured more than one million persons since
1975, the vast majority of them civilians, including an appalling number
of children. The prospects for an early end to the carnage are remote. Meanwhile,
another 100 million mines are believed to lie in stockpiles ready for
use.

But land-mines do not just kill and maim innocent
civilians. The mining of agricultural land leads to increased malnutrition
and, in some cases, starvation and famine. The mining of roads prevents or
endangers the repatriation of refugees and impedes the circulation of goods
and labour, even after the conflict has ended. It can rightly be said that
land-mines constitute an attack on society itself.

Children are particularly at risk because of their
innate inquisitiveness and love of play. Mines come in a bewildering array
of shapes and colours, all enticing to a child. The sheer number of land-mines
scattered indiscriminately sometimes leads children to regard them as harmless
everyday objects. In northern Iraq, for instance, Kurdish children use land-mines
to construct go-carts. Overcoming this sense of familiarity is essential
if death and injury are to be avoided.

Decades after they are laid, land-mines are capable
of killing and maiming. An anti-personnel mine deployed today could still
be active in the middle of the next century. One study conducted in the 1980s
found that there were casualties every year in Poland--80 per cent of them
children--from mines laid during World War II. It is this feature, the ability
to remain active for 40 years or more, that makes the anti-personnel land-mine
a uniquely deadly weapon.

Even when land-mines are deployed originally against
combatants within the limit of humanitarian law, unless they are subsequently
removed or destroyed, their effects will be indiscriminate. The fighting
may be over, but land-mines continue to kill and maim. Cambodians, who have
suffered the full horrors of land-mines, call these weapons "eternal
sentinels".

Those who are injured by land-mines suffer long-term
physical and psychological damage. But many land-mine victims (perhaps 50
per cent or more) are killed outright or die in agony before medical treatment
can be given. Children are particularly vulnerable because they are closer
to the centre of the blast. Further, their ability to survive the substantial
blood loss due to mine injury is minimal.

Those who make it to hospital have to undergo a
series of operations, including, in many instances, amputation of one or
more limbs. Some are permanently blinded. Maimed for life, only a small
percentage receive adequate rehabilitation. UNICEF estimates, for example,
that only 10 to 20 per cent of disabled children in El Salvador receive
rehabilitation therapy. The rest are forced to fend for themselves as best
they can. Amputees must often beg or steal to survive

No child ever started a war. Yet every time a war
breaks out, children as the most vulnerable members of society suffer the
worst. They are forced to live in fear, to give up their education. Some
lose their lives. Some lose beloved family members. All lose their
innocence.

The international community has long recognized
that children have no place in wars, yet children are still victimized. Many
children are even forced to fight in these wars. Today, over 300,000 children
(under the age of 18)  some as young as seven - are involved in hostilities
in over 30 countries. Girls and boys alike are abducted from schools, refugee
camps or their homes and trained to kill. Girls are subjected to sexual abuse
and rape, often systematically.

There are a number of reasons for this. As conflicts
sometimes rage for years, the recruitment of adults becomes more difficult
and military leaders turn to children. Moreover, children are impressionable
and can be easily intimidated; they can be manipulated into becoming ruthless,
unquestioning instruments of war.

How can we prevent this? First of all, we must
remember before going to war how high the price paid by children will be.
We must also make sure that those who abuse children -- who abuse them in
the multitude of ways we see in todays wars, who use them to fight,
who take their childhood away -- are punished. When we think of war crimes,
we must think first of crimes against children. When we call for the prosecution
of war criminals, we must begin with those whose victims were
children.

And, when the war is over, when it is time for
healing, the children must not be forgotten. Many of them will have internalized
the horrors of the battlefield. Some may have been forced to kill members
of their own communities, or even family members. Those who have not fought
will have witnessed the horrors of war on a daily basis and will be deeply
scarred. The rehabilitation and reintegration of children must be central
to any peace-building process.

THE WAR COMES TO THE U.S.

Sept. 11, 2001

In an instant New York City reminds us of Baghdad,
Belgrade, Sudan, the West Bank, Vietnam, Panama, Indonesia, Hiroshima,
Vieques.

The images flood our minds. Mothers running through
the streets of Baghdad with their children as U.S. bombs fall like rain.
Iraqi women watching their children die because U.S. bombs and sanctions
have deliberately poisoned the water they need to live. Families carrying
the coffins of sons taken out by made-in-U.S.A. rockets on the West
Bank.

Workers at a medicine factory picking through the
rubble in Sudan left by U.S. cruise missiles. Scrambling for cover in Belgrade
as U.S. bombs strike from the air. Looking through the stadium in Chile where
thousands of former lovers, sons, and daughters lay  stilled forever
by a coup made in Washington. Gasping with horror as the firing squads of
the Indonesian army, with CIA lists of political opponents in their pockets,
massacre hundreds of thousands, filling the rivers with the dead.

Hiroshima, Vietnam, Baghdad. The war has come home.
Even if the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were symbols of the financial
and military power of U.S. imperialism, the reality is that many innocent
people were killed as a result.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Canadian troops were at
a former al-Qaida training camp now used daily by coalition forces for live-fire
exercises when they were mistakenly bombed Thursday by a U.S. jet fighter,
leaving four dead and eight injured.

A mood of shock, bewilderment and disbelief descended
on the camp where more than 800 Canadian soldiers are based with other coalition
forces at an airfield south of Kandahar.

"We all expected a mine strike at some point; we
never expected this," said one of the soldiers at the base.

The accident happened in darkness -- 1:55 a.m.
local time -- at Tarnac Puhl, a compound once used by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida
network to train fighters. It was featured in instructional videos made by
the terrorist group.

Since the fall of the Taliban regime that harboured
al-Qaida in Afghanistan, however, the site has been used for weeks by coalition
troops to maintain their battle readiness in live-fire exercises.

The fact that live ammunition was being used led
to speculation among the troops that the American pilot might have thought
he was being fired upon, but military authorities have said only that an
investigation will be carried out.

Even the troops back at the base heard the jet
fighter overhead, its high-pitched scream clearly distinquishable from the
drone of military transport planes that usually fly in and out of the runway
on the base.

Soldiers also reported hearing the "whummph" when
the bomb hit the training range just several kilometres to the southwest.

Within an hour, all the soldiers on the base were
woken to respond to the emergency. Rescue teams rushed to retrieve the dead
and wounded. Some of the casualties were quickly evacuated out of Afghanistan,
while surgeons at the base hospital operated on others through the night.

After daylight, clusters of Canadian soldiers gathered
at a bulletin board outside the public affairs office. Many appeared shocked
by what they read from a statement about the deaths and injuries suffered
by their comrades -- members of the Edmonton-based 3rd Battalion of the Princess
Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.

They were the first Canadian Forces personnel killed
in a combat zone since the Korean War 50 years ago.

The mood was evident in the solemn movement of
the troops on the base. Some talked quietly in small groups. One soldier
was slumped in a chair, weeping.

Maj. Mike Audette, a spokesman for the Canadian
camp, said the tragedy would not distract the Canadian Forces from its mission
in Afghanistan. "We're focusing on the task at hand and realizing that we're
still fully engaged in an operational role," he said.

The Tarnac Puhl site where the bombing occurred
is a large, mud-walled compound with trench complexes around it. The compound
was largely destroyed by U.S. bombing during the war with the Taliban regime.

But even after the Taliban fled Kandahar, the
bombardment has continued. Coalition forces have been using the compound
daily for live-fire exercises. Its walls have crumbled from repeated blasts
from grenades, mortars, landmines and other weapons fired during exercises.
Spent ammunition can be seen lying everywhere. The hulk of a bombed-out tank
is crippled on the dusty grounds.

During live-fire exercises, troops plan an assault
and charge toward an objective under covering fire. Live ammunition is used
to make the training as realistic as possible, and grenades and other explosives
are frequently set off.

All the action makes the site dangerous with unexploded
ordnance. Several weeks ago, at least two American soldiers were killed by
a landmine there.

Like all coalition troops in Afghanistan, Canadian
soldiers put reflective silver tape on their helmets and equipment to identify
them to friendly aircraft overhead. Thursday's accident showed the safety
measure does not totally safeguard the troops from "friendly fire."

Last month, Canadian troops had a close call in
eastern Afghanistan when they went on Operation Harpoon, an offensive to
help U.S.-led coalition forces search for Taliban and al-Qaida fighters on
a mountain known as "the Whale."

An American fighter pilot reported that he had
identified enemy on the mountain and wanted to "light 'em up," according
to military sources. His commanders later realized it was a mistaken
identification of Canadian troops as enemy, and the bombing was called off
just five minutes before it was to begin.

THE COMING WAR

REVELATION

It is imperative to know the meaning of some of
the code words frequently used:

Four (4) signifies the world.

Six (6) signifies imperfection.

Seven (7) is the totality of perfection or fullness
and completeness.

Twelve (12) represents the twelve tribes of Israel
or the 12 apostles.

One-thousand (1000) signifies immensity.

The color white symbolizes power and can also represent
victory, joy and resurrection.

The color red symbolizes a bloody war.

The color black symbolizes famine.

A rider on a pale green horse is a symbol of Death
itself.

Babylon is the satanic Roman Government,
now used to describe the U.S. government.

Rev. 16: 10 And the fifth angel poured out his vial
upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they
gnawed their tongues for pain, 11 And blasphemed the God of heaven because
of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds. 12 And the
sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water
thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.
13 And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the
dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false
prophet. 14 For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go
forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them
to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. 15 Behold, I come as a thief.
Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked,
and they see his shame. 16 And he gathered them together into a place called
in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon. 17 And the seventh angel poured out his
vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven,
from the throne, saying, It is done. 18 And there were voices, and thunders,
and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men
were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great. 19 And the great
city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell: and
great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give unto her the cup of
the wine of the fierceness of his wrath. 20 And every island fled away, and
the mountains were not found. 21 And there fell upon men a great hail out
of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent: and men blasphemed God
because of the plague of the hail; for the plague thereof was exceeding great.

In Revelation 19 we find: "And I saw heaven
opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful
and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. . . .and on his
head were many crowns. . . . And the armies which were in heaven followed
him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of
his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations:
and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress
of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And he hath on his vesture and
on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.

"And I saw the beast [from the sea], and the kings
of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him
that sat on the horse, and against his army. And the beast was taken, and
with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he
deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped
his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with
brimstone." (Rev. 19:11-16, 19, 20)

The horns turn and destroy the woman

" And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast,
these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall
eat her flesh, and burn her with fire. For God hath put in their hearts to
fulfil his will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the beast, until
the words of God shall be fulfilled. (Rev. 17:16, 17)

"How much she hath glorified herself . . . for she
saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.
Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine;
and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who
judgeth her." (Rev. 18:7, 8).

Isaiah 14:1 For the Lord will have mercy on Jacob,
and will yet choose Israel, and set them in their own land: and the strangers
shall be joined with them, and they shall cleave to the house of Jacob. 2
And the people shall take them, and bring them to their place: and the house
of Israel shall possess them in the land of the Lord for servants and handmaids:
and they shall take them captives, whose captives they were; and they shall
rule over their oppressors. 3 And it shall come to pass in the day that the
Lord shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the
hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve, 4 That thou shalt take up this
proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased!
the golden city ceased! 5 The Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked, and
the scepter of the rulers. 6 He who smote the people in wrath with a continual
stroke, he that ruled the nations in anger, is persecuted, and none hindereth.
7 The whole Earth is at rest, and is quiet: they break forth into singing.
8 Yea, the fir trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of Lebanon, saying,
Since thou art laid down, no teller is come up against us. 9 Hell from beneath
is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for
thee, even all the chief ones of the Earth; it hath raised up from their
thrones all the kings of the nations. 10 All they shall speak and say unto
thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto us? 11 Thy
pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is
spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. 12 How art thou fallen from
Heaven, 0 Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground,
which didst weaken the nations! 13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will
ascend into Heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will
sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: 14
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High.
15 Yet thou shalt be brought down to Hell, to the sides of the
pit.

Daniel 2: 26 The king answered and said to Daniel,
whose name was Belteshazzar, Art thou able to make known unto me the dream
which I have seen, and the interpretation thereof? 27 Daniel answered in
the presence of the king, and said, The secret which the king hath demanded
cannot the wise men. the astrologers, the magicians, the soothsayers, shew
unto the king; 28 But there is a God in Heaven that revealeth secrets, and
maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days.
Thy dream, and the visions of thy head upon thy bed, are these-, 29 As for
thee, 0 king, thy thoughts came into thy mind upon thy bed, what should come
to pass hereafter: and he that revealeth secrets maketh known to thee what
shall come to pass. 30 But as for me, this secret is not revealed to me for
any wisdom that I have more than any living, but for their sakes that shall
make known the interpretation to the king, and that thou mightest know the
thoughts of thy heart- 31 Thou, 0 king, sawest, and behold a great image.
This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and
the form thereof was terrible. 32 This image's head was of fine GOLD, his
breast and his arms of SILVER, his belly and his thighs of BRASS, 33 His
legs of IRON, his feet part of IRON and part of CLAY. 34 Thou sawest till
that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet
that were of IRON and CLAY, and brake them to pieces. 35 Then was the IRON,
the CLAY, the BRASS, the SILVER, and the GOLD, broken to pieces together,
and became like the chaff of the summer threshingfloors; and the wind carried
them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the
image became a great mountain, and filled the whole Earth. 36 This is the
dream; and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the king. 37 Thou,
0 king, art a king of kings: for the God of Heaven hath given thee a kingdom,
power, and strength, and glory. 38 And wheresoever the children of men dwell,
the beasts of the field and the fowls of the Heaven hath he given into thine
hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all. Thou art this head of GOLD.
39 And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee, and another
third kingdom of BRASS, which shall bear rule over all the Earth, 40 And
the fourth kingdom shall be strong as IRON: forasmuch as IRON breaketh in
pieces and subdueth all things: and as IRON that breaketh all these, shall
it break in pieces and bruise. 41 And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes,
part of potters' CLAY, and part of IRON, the kingdom shall be divided; but
there shall be in it of the strength of the IRON, forasmuch as thou sawest
the IRON mixed with miry CLAY. 42 And as the toes of the feet were part of
IRON, and part of CLAY, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly
broken. 43 And whereas thou sawest IRON mixed with miry CLAY, they shall
mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to
another, even as IRON is not mixed with CLAY. 44 And in the days of these
kings shall the God of Heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed:
and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in
pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever. 45 Forasmuch
as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands,
and that it brake in pieces the IRON, the BRASS, the CLAY, the SILVER, and
the GOLD; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass
hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof
sure.

The kingdoms represented
are

GOLD

BABYLON

625 B.C. TO 539
B.C.

SILVER

MEDO PERSIA

539 B.C. TO 331
B.C.

BRASS

GREECE

331
B.C. TO 323 B.C.

IRON

ROME

STARTING ABOUT 160
B.C.

IRON
& CLAY

THETENKINGDOMNEWWORLDORDER

??????

The times of the Gentiles started with Nebuchadnezzar,
King of Babylon, the head of GOLD, and will climax when the Great Rock hits
the image in the feet. Speaking of the feet, Daniel 2 states in the days
of THESE KINGS -- WHICH KINGS? -- THE ONES REPRESENTED BY THE TEN TOES OF
THE IMAGE -- SHALL THE GOD OF HEAVEN SET UP A KINGDOM, WHICH SHALL NEVER
BE DESTROYED.

Other references to the same period of time and
the same 10 kings are:

Revelation 13:1 KJV And I stood upon the sand of
the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and TEN
HORNS and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.
2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as
the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon
gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.

TEN HORNS WITH TEN CROWNS

Daniel states:

Daniel 7:7 KJV After this I saw in the night visions,
and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly;
and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped
the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that
were before it; and it had TEN HORNS.

Daniel 7:19 KJV Then I would know the truth of the
fourth beast, which was diverse from all the others, exceeding dreadful,
whose teeth were of iron, and his nails of brass; which devoured, brake in
pieces, and stamped the residue with his feet; 20 And of THE TEN HORNS that
were in his head, and of the other which came up, and before whom three fell;
even of that horn that had eyes, and a mouth that spake very great things,
whose look was more stout than his fellows. 21 I beheld, and the same horn
made war with the saints, and prevailed against them; 22 Until the Ancient
of Days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the Most High; and
the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom. 23 Thus he said, The
fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon Earth, which shall be diverse
from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole Earth, and shall tread it down,
and break it in pieces. 24 And the TEN HORNS OUT OF THIS KINGDOM ARE TEN
KINGS WHICH SHALL ARISE: and another shall rise after them; and he shall
be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings.

THE ROCK hitting the image in the feet is the Battle
of Armageddon in Revelation 19 where Jesus returns and defeats the 10 kingdom,
NEW WORLD ORDER, CALLED BABYLON IN REVELATION--MAN'S FINAL ORGANIZED REBELLION
UNDER SATAN AGAINST GOD.

Revelation 13 and 17 tell about a beast having seven
heads and ten horns. If you read Daniel 7, where the same beast is pictured,
we are told that the ten horns represent ten kingdoms.

The Books of Revelation and Daniel picture this
final effort, and Revelation describes Babylon as having three
parts:

POLITICAL BABYLON - The 10 Kingdom NEW WORLD ORDER
OF THE ANTICHRIST.

RELIGIOUS BABYLON - The world-wide religious system
of THE FALSE PROPHET - THE GREAT WHORE OF REVELATION 17.

COMMERCIAL BABYLON - THE NECESSITY OF BOWING TO
THE ANTICHRIST IN ORDER TO BUY OR SELL - THIS WILL BE ADMINISTERED BY
THERELIGIOUS SYSTEM - The second beast
of Revelation 13 is the False Prophet.

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly
Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand o'er your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead